"Conceptualizing the urban landscape as an inheritance confers on its heirs an entitlement to control its destiny." - Andrew Hurley

           At the center of this week’s readings, we are introduced to the idea of the urban setting as a ground ripe with possibilities for histories to be unearthed. The sheer magnitude of the swift changes seen in large metropolis areas over time goes to show the possibilities that the power of place can have in using the environment as a larger classroom for conversation about the significance of space and location. Andrew Hurley’s Beyond Preservation explores these themes, tracing the history of “bottom-up” history and the history of federal legislation that transformed how historic preservation was conducted in the United States. The bulk of Hurley’s study looks at public history successes in Old North St. Louis in addition to other urban areas throughout the country, but Hurley warns that the failures of public history projects often happen, “because the interpretive schemes […] do not speak directly to the challenges contemporary residents face and to the kind of places they want to create” (Hurley 95).

            Dolores Hayden similarly articulates in Urban Landscapes as Public History issues of identity, gender, race, etc. had been largely ignored in the understanding of urban environments. Hayden calls her readers to action by identifying the problem of the “entire urban landscape” needs to be studied, rather than exclusively focusing on remaining physical structures. Successfully including this in public history projects helps to create the urban environment as a vital part of American history (Hayden 11).

            Placed together, Hayden and Hurley highlight the benefits and challenges on looking at the urban landscape as a powerful place to conduct history. Evidently, their studies provide important insights into how our class conducts our project with the residents of Mantua. Hurley writes that the history of the urban landscape offers an “inheritance” to its residents. One of my primary concerns lies in the issue of defining what place means to the informants of our oral histories. We are aware of the immediacy of the impact they want to make now, but what is the legacy they wish to leave behind? It may be worth discussing in future classes among us to see how we look to Mantua’s story as an American story. This may perhaps be a theme that we wish to tackle as we move forward. By thinking about the Mantua story as an American story, we can further work towards a “shared authority” with a larger audience.  

"Redefine and Redistribute Intellectual Authority"

We intend to create a web tool for the Mantua Civic Association (MCA) that is guided by community concerns to document the histories of Mantuans for the purposes of empowerment in the faces of current expansionism in the neighborhood.

By the end of our third class, the six of us had drafted a mission statement to guide our oral history project in Mantua. This exercise was one that brought us out of the classroom directly onto the field that would steer our interactions and goals with Mantua’s community members. The preliminary stages of this project have proved that we are grappling with a political dimension, which contributes heavily to the challenges of not only this project, but more broadly in the field of public history. How are we to address active and inherent power structures in this particular place through the lens of oral histories?

In much the same way that our mission statement navigated our theoretical discussions to the practical, scholar Michael Frisch similarly writes that theories are heavily grounded in practice. Furthermore, Leon Fink’s contact with the Cooleemee Historical Association (CHA) illuminate issues of the uses of history in specific places and the “impressive harnessing of history to community identity” (Fink 120). Many of my concerns entering this project are highlighted in Fink’s study, particularly in his treatment of the participants involved in crafting the history of the southern working class. As is made evident in Fink’s article, history “gets done” regardless of whether or not historians are actively involved in the process. This is made clear through Cooleemee’s adopted community members Jim and Lynn Rumley. Through oral histories and research, the Rumleys sought out to reclaim the roots of a working-class town in much the same way as the case studies presented in Pennsylvania in Public Memory. Fink's study illuminated Frisch's idea that the CHA failed to "redefine and redistribute intellectual authority" (xx). What was left were often racially charged interpretations and the pitfalls of relying on nostalgia, not to mention a failed relationship between the historian and the public.

Ultimately, oral histories are a dual product of subject and the historian. One of the challenges is to highlight the power structures at play, but also ensure that our subjects do not become alienated from us. As discussed throughout the course of this class, this is the ultimate struggle of engaging in public history work. It will be compelling to see how we earn the trust and form relationships with the people of Mantua.  

The Roots, Issues, and Themes of Public History

This week's readings provide a fundamental framework to understanding the relationship between the general public and the public historian, particularly in how this relationship has transformed over the course of several decades. These selected texts emphasize the role of public history in constructing public historical narratives - that their voices are a very real force in crafting the fluid and perpetually changing memorialization process.

We are introduced and guided through these ideas quite convincingly in Rosenzweig and Thelen's The Presence of the Past. Their analysis of a national survey demonstrates that the American public forges very personal relationships with the past, whether through the media, museums, books, family, etc. This study was fundamental in debunking the idea that Americans are passive participants of the past, a tenant that may have emerged from the general passivity attributed to traditional history teaching in American classrooms.

These personal relationships to the past are fleshed out and given a focalized study in Carolyn Kitch's Pennsylvania in Public Memory. Kitch's examination of Pennsylvania's industrial history raises questions of how local identity and history intersect in the establishment of industrial heritage sites. In much the same way that heritage sites consider the regional identity in their narratives, such a process, "reframe[s] local identity for the people who live in it, creat[ing] a rhetorical bridge between regional character and nationality..." (42).

Similarly, Tyrrell's study of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (MVHA) highlights the organization's shifts throughout the early twentieth century - ones that focused on regionalism and its connections to a broader American identity. While not without its tensions, the MVHA forged relationships between professional and amateur historians, a service of collaboration among regional experts.

Collaboration between the public and historians is explored in Denise Meringolo's tracing of the beginnings and meanings of public history's major tenants. Rather than attempting to legitimize the field as others have done before her, Meringolo seeks to trace the field's roots.

Together, these texts highlight the important themes and issues that arise in the practice of public history. As demonstrated in Kitch's study, the memories and connections of a group's past to their region is often in tandem with how heritage sites and memorials derive their meaning. This displays the active role that the public plays in constructing and voicing their history. For me, this raises some questions as to the ways in which public historians connect to the communities they serve. First, public historians and Americans are not immune to larger national narratives. A positive, negative, or ambivalent response or attitude to this narrative is nonetheless a response. Thus, how are public historians to reconcile local histories with broader themes? Rosenzweig and Thelen address this issue in regards to minority groups whose history has been largely ignored and misrepresented in American history and life. This issue is incredibly relevant to this semester's oral history project with select residents of Mantua. In witnessing these members actively tell and engage us in their history, who and what do we represent as young public historians in the process? Furthermore, how and to what level are bridges of trust created? In reading Pennsylvania in Public Memory, these were just some questions that I hoped would become clearer in Kitch's study as well as we grow throughout the semester's discussions and projects.