This is the last blog post I'll post for my public history class this semester. It's been a new experience to be immersed within the field and academic side of public history, and I'm thankful for the hands-on nature of this class. Throughout the semester, I've learned many different things about what goes into local history and the importance of it. Before taking this class, I didn't really consider the value of small town history. I also appreciate the opportunity to learn about Goshen, Indiana because it is a place that I consider a partway home, but know very little about because most of my time is spent on my college campus. It's great to begin to understand the complications and issues that arise in Goshen and also the small marks of beauty that local history can show.
My favorite part of this class was exploring the Indiana Room in the Goshen Public Library. It was a lot of work to do the initial research, but after a while I found joy in the repetition of looking through the old books and directories that offered their information to me. To some degree, I also enjoyed researching my house and synthesizing the information that arose.
I learned a lot about archives, collections, and ownership rights of artifacts. I actually enjoyed the 'Nearby History' book because it outlined great ways not only to display history, but to do it as well. I wish we could have talked more about public history professions and had a more realistic idea of what it means to apply and work in a public history sphere outside of a typical museum setting. We could have practiced cover letters, resumes and how to find out about those types of jobs and internships because ultimately in public history, experience is the real teacher.
I really think that this class could be an awesome May Term class because then it would allow time to travel to more museums and experience archives. I'm a little curious why we didn't spend more time in the Mennonite Church USA archives because they are on campus. As an off campus May Term class, more field trips with more opportunity for research and different kind of exhibits could be explored. I would have loved to go to the Natural History museum in Chicago and I think it would have been more beneficial than Conner Prairie for a field trip. As we've stated before, this class would be a great class for a May term or even a fall term.
I took public history because I'm considering interpretation work for a career, although it will be more of a natural history/environmental education path. Overall, I thought the class was helpful, but did not change my mind either way in terms of what kind of career I'd like to do. I do think it will help on a resume though. I learned a lot and am generally happy I took the class.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Anglo Pioneers and ECHM
Today we visited the Elkhart County Historical Museum. I've gone there a number of times for my junior seminar and also for this public history class, but today we were "set loose" to explore and critique. ECHM has some good exhibits and some great small-town heart, but I couldn't help but to think of ways that it could be improved.
As a typical local museum, ECHM is small and most of the exhibits do not have much interpretation to go along with them. I did notice some good steps in adding to the educational aspect, such as dress up bins and interactive cards. I understand the struggles of the curators working to please the board of directors as well as the Elkhart community that are hesitant to change. What if there was an "I-Spy" list for each room? That would encourage children and adults to really look around the room. It's an idea that works well with the type of collections and displays that ECHM has in place now, and adds the next step of interpretation to the exhibits.
Natalie and I briefly visited each exhibit except for the train room and the Partly Dave exhibit. We spent a few minutes looking at the geological display in the Native American collection and wondered why there were samples from Wyoming, Utah, and other far away states. We were impressed with the samples that were from Indiana, however. I don't think that Elkhart County Historical Museum has the most accurate or best way of representing the Native Americans or the Anglo people that followed them.
The pioneer representation of the museum is based mostly on objects and less on interpretation, as with the rest of the museum. While it's nice to have the freedom to interpret exhibits how you will, I felt like more direction could be given for each room. The two downstairs exhibits, The Cottage and The Schoolhouse both had one board that gave some interpretation. And it didn't leave the Native American's out.
Overall, ECHM is probably doing some good things with the community and as an archive and local history center they are excellent. As an interpretive museum, they could use some work. I think the curators and managers have some big ideas and I'm excited to see the direction of the museum in the future.
As a typical local museum, ECHM is small and most of the exhibits do not have much interpretation to go along with them. I did notice some good steps in adding to the educational aspect, such as dress up bins and interactive cards. I understand the struggles of the curators working to please the board of directors as well as the Elkhart community that are hesitant to change. What if there was an "I-Spy" list for each room? That would encourage children and adults to really look around the room. It's an idea that works well with the type of collections and displays that ECHM has in place now, and adds the next step of interpretation to the exhibits.
Natalie and I briefly visited each exhibit except for the train room and the Partly Dave exhibit. We spent a few minutes looking at the geological display in the Native American collection and wondered why there were samples from Wyoming, Utah, and other far away states. We were impressed with the samples that were from Indiana, however. I don't think that Elkhart County Historical Museum has the most accurate or best way of representing the Native Americans or the Anglo people that followed them.
The pioneer representation of the museum is based mostly on objects and less on interpretation, as with the rest of the museum. While it's nice to have the freedom to interpret exhibits how you will, I felt like more direction could be given for each room. The two downstairs exhibits, The Cottage and The Schoolhouse both had one board that gave some interpretation. And it didn't leave the Native American's out.
Overall, ECHM is probably doing some good things with the community and as an archive and local history center they are excellent. As an interpretive museum, they could use some work. I think the curators and managers have some big ideas and I'm excited to see the direction of the museum in the future.
Monday, March 17, 2014
"The Indiana Way" on Native Peoples
The first three sections of The Indiana Way: a state history by James H. Madison explore Indiana before it was a state, dealing with Native Americans before the white settlers arrived and their relations with them after they arrived. The first chapter explored the native people before Europe had settled North America. Some of the tribes in the Indiana area were the Potawatomis and the Miamis. Madison notes that there is not a lot of archaeological evidence about the Paleo-Indian people (up to 8000 B.C.), but that there definitely were people in the area. The four prehistoric traditions each increase with more information about the prehistoric peoples and the last one, titled the Mississippian Tradition (A.D. 900-1600) has the most information due to recency (5).
A few years prior to the American Revolution was The French and Indian War fought between the British and French colonists in America. The Native American people played a big part in the war through trading and economic agreements. The French had a more consistent relationship with the Potawatomis and the Miamis through the fur trade, but it was not necessarily nonviolent. The British did not have as great an opportunity to form a relationship with the Indians because of their victory in the French and Indian War.
Madison acknowledges that his history is not a reference book and that he has tried to include both the glorified and nonglorified parts of Indiana's history (xiv). This non-glorification comes out strongly when Madison writes about the relationship between the white people and the Native Americans during the end of the 18th century. Since "Indians did not fully understand or share American concepts of land ownership and transfer of title to land," Harrison was able to exploit and take advantage of them in order to take their land (38). He used the conflict in between tribes and within tribes to coalesce them into change. Along with that, missionaries and federal agents tried to 'civilize' and 'assimilate' the Indians that they encountered with harsh treatment. As a result, there were strong anti-anglo feelings in the Native American nations and those feelings translated into war acts. William Wells was a Indian-American translator who was born in Kentucky but was kidnapped by Indians at a young age. When given the chance to return to his Kentucky family, he refused and stayed with the Indian tribe as a part of their community and militia. Later in life, he translated between the government and the Indian nation, but was not fully trusted on either side.
In the Indiana area, slavery was a controversial issue. Prominent people had held slaves for years, and in the early 1800's, Governor George Harrison pushed for the legalization of slavery in the Indiana area. In 1805, a bill was passed that legalized indentured servitude, but not slavery. The loophole through this was that the indentured servants would have sentences longer than their lifespan, making them slaves (49). The Quakers in southeastern Indiana were against slavery. When Indiana became a state in 1816, slavery was abolished except for already existing servants/slaves, and then that policy was overruled in the early 1820's.
My reaction the The Indiana Way is that it is quite a bit of information crammed into one book, but that's to be expected in a state history. State history books tend to glorify the state's past, usually because they are written by people from that state, or because the authors care about the state. I'm happy to see that Madison addresses his own bias in the introduction and writes in a way (so far) that is not overly romantic nor overly critical.
A few years prior to the American Revolution was The French and Indian War fought between the British and French colonists in America. The Native American people played a big part in the war through trading and economic agreements. The French had a more consistent relationship with the Potawatomis and the Miamis through the fur trade, but it was not necessarily nonviolent. The British did not have as great an opportunity to form a relationship with the Indians because of their victory in the French and Indian War.
Madison acknowledges that his history is not a reference book and that he has tried to include both the glorified and nonglorified parts of Indiana's history (xiv). This non-glorification comes out strongly when Madison writes about the relationship between the white people and the Native Americans during the end of the 18th century. Since "Indians did not fully understand or share American concepts of land ownership and transfer of title to land," Harrison was able to exploit and take advantage of them in order to take their land (38). He used the conflict in between tribes and within tribes to coalesce them into change. Along with that, missionaries and federal agents tried to 'civilize' and 'assimilate' the Indians that they encountered with harsh treatment. As a result, there were strong anti-anglo feelings in the Native American nations and those feelings translated into war acts. William Wells was a Indian-American translator who was born in Kentucky but was kidnapped by Indians at a young age. When given the chance to return to his Kentucky family, he refused and stayed with the Indian tribe as a part of their community and militia. Later in life, he translated between the government and the Indian nation, but was not fully trusted on either side.
In the Indiana area, slavery was a controversial issue. Prominent people had held slaves for years, and in the early 1800's, Governor George Harrison pushed for the legalization of slavery in the Indiana area. In 1805, a bill was passed that legalized indentured servitude, but not slavery. The loophole through this was that the indentured servants would have sentences longer than their lifespan, making them slaves (49). The Quakers in southeastern Indiana were against slavery. When Indiana became a state in 1816, slavery was abolished except for already existing servants/slaves, and then that policy was overruled in the early 1820's.
My reaction the The Indiana Way is that it is quite a bit of information crammed into one book, but that's to be expected in a state history. State history books tend to glorify the state's past, usually because they are written by people from that state, or because the authors care about the state. I'm happy to see that Madison addresses his own bias in the introduction and writes in a way (so far) that is not overly romantic nor overly critical.
Friday, March 14, 2014
particular and universal -- how they relate to our final exhibit
In Nearby History we read two chapters: 'Research, Writing, and Leaving a Record' and 'Linking the Particular and the Universal.' From the first chapter, I found a few things that I thought related to our public history final project, although most of them were more helpful for when I consider my research plan for my undergraduate thesis. I appreciated the emphasis on organization and back-up files, simply because those are two things that I don't excel at when I am researching. The authors suggest different methods of organizing notes and research as well as explain how to leave your work behind in archives, libraries, or other types of repositories. I think for the exhibit project, a folder or binder as well as a google document between our group would be sufficient for notes, but for larger papers like my thesis, I plan to use color coded index cards for categorizing sources and their citations along with a 3 ring binder for drafts, peer-reviews, hand-written and typed notes along with anything else that I need.
The second chapter, 'Linking the Particular and the Universal' was especially helpful as I consider our final project. For the exhibit, we plan on juxtaposing particular pieces of Goshen history with broad American cultural movements. This chapter speaks almost directly to what we plan on doing. By considering the 'new social history,' academic and public historians can come together to research and give a voice to the marginalized people in society. The authors cited a few paragraphs worth of studies, and there were two that interested me. First, was Philip J. Greven Jr.'s Four Generations: Population, land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts where he "used vital, town probate and deed records to determine family characteristics and land-ownership patterns (235)." This is exactly what our house history project and our final project entail! The second part I liked was an acknowledgement that Native-American communities are indeed worthwhile to study and deserve a detailed investigation concerning European displacement (237).
In the latter half of the chapter, the authors address the authors address issues of geography and community as well as social-economics, especially in relation to immigration. They address also institutions, postmodernism, and the importance of family history to local history. Our final exhibit project will hopefully be a combination of the small, local, 'new social' history with the broad American history. I believe that 'new social history' has been the combining factor between public historians and academic historians. While they may approach it with a different viewpoint, the understanding that the marginalized and underrepresented people deserve a part of history is a step in the right direction for the grand scheme of human history. It will be really interesting to see how little Goshen relates to big America. I'm excited to pursue our project further.
The second chapter, 'Linking the Particular and the Universal' was especially helpful as I consider our final project. For the exhibit, we plan on juxtaposing particular pieces of Goshen history with broad American cultural movements. This chapter speaks almost directly to what we plan on doing. By considering the 'new social history,' academic and public historians can come together to research and give a voice to the marginalized people in society. The authors cited a few paragraphs worth of studies, and there were two that interested me. First, was Philip J. Greven Jr.'s Four Generations: Population, land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts where he "used vital, town probate and deed records to determine family characteristics and land-ownership patterns (235)." This is exactly what our house history project and our final project entail! The second part I liked was an acknowledgement that Native-American communities are indeed worthwhile to study and deserve a detailed investigation concerning European displacement (237).
In the latter half of the chapter, the authors address the authors address issues of geography and community as well as social-economics, especially in relation to immigration. They address also institutions, postmodernism, and the importance of family history to local history. Our final exhibit project will hopefully be a combination of the small, local, 'new social' history with the broad American history. I believe that 'new social history' has been the combining factor between public historians and academic historians. While they may approach it with a different viewpoint, the understanding that the marginalized and underrepresented people deserve a part of history is a step in the right direction for the grand scheme of human history. It will be really interesting to see how little Goshen relates to big America. I'm excited to pursue our project further.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
ethics and public history
Public history, as a relatively new field, means that the ethical codes written for them are also relatively new. While I read through the codes of conduct for the SAA, NCPH, AAM, and OAH, I was also curious about what the American Historical Society had to say about ethics. I perused the code, focusing primarily on the Public Realm section. From my experience in the public history class, I thought that the AHS would be ultimately a little apprehensive to accept public historians as worthwhile to the field of history, but from their website, it seems that this is not so. Perhaps the scholars involved in the AHS are apprehensive of public history as a field, but I think that ultimately, being a part of the field of history requires general respect.
From AHS Public Realm:
The codes of ethics from the organizations that we looked at were generally related. They differed in the specifics, as is expected because the organizations have different objectives. The NCPH lays out what the ideal public historian will uphold, ethically and the job of the public historian. The SAA Code of Ethics focuses on professional relationships, judgement, authenticity, security and protection, access and use, privacy, trust. The code of ethics for museums focuses on the display, preparation, collections, and governance of those museums. For the Oral History code, more focus is on the process of interviewing because interviewees are living human beings. Oral History involves consent, old material does not. Interviewees are of equal authority as interviewers. Oral History Ethics gives specific outlines of how to go about following the ethical rules. Other codes do not give such suggestions, just relatively vague outlines.
Overall, I think the individual codes were pretty similar in their objectives. The main issues raised in the articles and in the ethics codes are those of representation and respect as well as professionalism and public interest. For a public historian, it is important to represent history in an accurate, but interesting and thought-provoking way.
From AHS Public Realm:
"for when historians communicate with a wider public, they must represent not just a particular interpretation or body of facts, but the best practices of the discipline of history itself. This means they must inevitably walk a tightrope in balancing their desire to present a particular point of view with their responsibility to uphold the standards and values that underpin their professional authority as historians."The main point of this excerpt is to display that public historians walk a fine line ethically. As we have learned, part of public history is social activism, at least to some degree. Presenting and interpreting information in the public sphere is a different game than writing a monograph. You can't close your office door to the public as a public historian.
The codes of ethics from the organizations that we looked at were generally related. They differed in the specifics, as is expected because the organizations have different objectives. The NCPH lays out what the ideal public historian will uphold, ethically and the job of the public historian. The SAA Code of Ethics focuses on professional relationships, judgement, authenticity, security and protection, access and use, privacy, trust. The code of ethics for museums focuses on the display, preparation, collections, and governance of those museums. For the Oral History code, more focus is on the process of interviewing because interviewees are living human beings. Oral History involves consent, old material does not. Interviewees are of equal authority as interviewers. Oral History Ethics gives specific outlines of how to go about following the ethical rules. Other codes do not give such suggestions, just relatively vague outlines.
Overall, I think the individual codes were pretty similar in their objectives. The main issues raised in the articles and in the ethics codes are those of representation and respect as well as professionalism and public interest. For a public historian, it is important to represent history in an accurate, but interesting and thought-provoking way.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Immigrant Teens Tell Their Story
Immigrant Teens Tell Their Story is an article written by Douglas Simpson published in Exhibitionist that explains the process of creating a student-curated exhibit in the Newton History Museum in suburban Boston, MA. The idea came from the acknowledgment of immigrant population in Newton as well as the desire to expand on recent immigrants. The museum prompted the idea of a teenage-curated exhibit to draw in younger viewers and identify personal stories. Through an application process, they chose seven individuals representing Hong Kong, Russia, Korea, and Mexico. Those students worked for 6 months with museum curators to design and produce an exhibit. The budget was fairly small, so the team thought of ideas to represent their ideas in a low-cost way. Cut outs of each individual were juxtaposed with seven exhibit cases, full of personal items, photographs, and narrated by text. In order to give access to people of each nationality, translations were provided in a hand-out exhibit guide.
This article is almost exactly what I think we need when considering the East Lincoln Crossroads. A small budget, individual, story-telling exhibit. It's even about immigration. Working with a small exhibit in a local history context, it's important to have an exhibit theme that is outlined by personal narratives that the community can connect to. In Goshen, I think this theme is latino immigration. They kept the exhibit simple because they did not have the funds to do otherwise, but I like it that way. It gives the focus to the individual stories. I also like that this article is about a student-curated exhibit, because that also directly correlates to our own project.
Simpson, Douglas. “Immigrant Teens Tell Their Story,” NAME Exhibitionist, Fall, 2009, 51-54.
This article is almost exactly what I think we need when considering the East Lincoln Crossroads. A small budget, individual, story-telling exhibit. It's even about immigration. Working with a small exhibit in a local history context, it's important to have an exhibit theme that is outlined by personal narratives that the community can connect to. In Goshen, I think this theme is latino immigration. They kept the exhibit simple because they did not have the funds to do otherwise, but I like it that way. It gives the focus to the individual stories. I also like that this article is about a student-curated exhibit, because that also directly correlates to our own project.
Simpson, Douglas. “Immigrant Teens Tell Their Story,” NAME Exhibitionist, Fall, 2009, 51-54.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
finally, some understanding.
For the final project, we are doing an exhibit project. I think the best way that oral history can contribute to our exhibit proposal is through digital media and through displaying text and photographs. If we conducted interviews with people that live in the neighborhood, we could film them and create a video that could be a part of the final exhibit. The interviews and the people themselves could be a prominent part of the neighborhood. Depending on the information that surfaces through our research, oral history could definitely be utilized as a tool for a physical exhibit.
I was interested in looking through Jan Shetler's Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library, a project where she is digitizing her personal research so many people, including her interviewees, are able to access it. but the link we had was corrupt. More on that later.
Through reading the chapter on oral history and unpublished documents in Nearby History, I came to better understand the process of interviewing. I feel well introduced to the unpublished documents and the basics of interviews, but I have never actually conducted one. Joe Springer also spoke about the interview process with his work on the Veteran's History Project.
As I think through it more, I am excited to see what my classmates have uncovered with their own house histories. Perhaps it will finally lead to a 'big picture' understanding of the neighborhood. We have talked about a large Latino presence, but I have not seen any real data supporting that in my own research. I wonder how that data can be accessed? I'm sure that there are tools, but I haven't stumbled upon them yet. I think the thing that I am lacking from this research is a story. I'm not as interested in a name, or an occupation as I am in a story. Who were these people? How did they live their lives? Who's lives did they touch and who touched theirs? What were their heartaches, their happiness, and their life's purpose? Those are the things that I am looking forward to teasing out further through this project. Maybe with some more work it can get to be a little bit more personal.
A section from Nearby History, page 113:
I was interested in looking through Jan Shetler's Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library, a project where she is digitizing her personal research so many people, including her interviewees, are able to access it. but the link we had was corrupt. More on that later.
Through reading the chapter on oral history and unpublished documents in Nearby History, I came to better understand the process of interviewing. I feel well introduced to the unpublished documents and the basics of interviews, but I have never actually conducted one. Joe Springer also spoke about the interview process with his work on the Veteran's History Project.
As I think through it more, I am excited to see what my classmates have uncovered with their own house histories. Perhaps it will finally lead to a 'big picture' understanding of the neighborhood. We have talked about a large Latino presence, but I have not seen any real data supporting that in my own research. I wonder how that data can be accessed? I'm sure that there are tools, but I haven't stumbled upon them yet. I think the thing that I am lacking from this research is a story. I'm not as interested in a name, or an occupation as I am in a story. Who were these people? How did they live their lives? Who's lives did they touch and who touched theirs? What were their heartaches, their happiness, and their life's purpose? Those are the things that I am looking forward to teasing out further through this project. Maybe with some more work it can get to be a little bit more personal.
A section from Nearby History, page 113:
"'...the new social history,' that is, the history of the nonelite, of men and women in ordinary walks of life. Some individuals among them stood out from others, of course, and they should receive the attention they deserve, but historians of the nearby past should not ignore the opportunity to draw composite sketches of anonymous folks who though the years have played important but unheralded and so far unrecorded parts in the communities, institutions, and families to which they belonged."I think I finally understand.
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