tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27146660372978149902024-03-12T19:24:53.439-07:00Navigating Public HistoryAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-79731046183469027572016-04-19T05:43:00.002-07:002016-04-19T05:43:47.051-07:00Hybrids and Social Justice This week's readings are perhaps the most challenging of the semester because they ask us to consider some larger connections to our relationship with things.<br />
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Brian Latour's "Crisis" certainly gave me a sense of unease just based on the title. In his essay, Latour explains that the way that we create our scholarship and understand ourselves fails to link how they relate to larger chains of networks. He identifies three different categories - nature, politics, and discourse - that we use to distinguish the study of the world around us. Latour critiques this separation and connects it to his conversation about what it really means to be modern. The reason Latour's essay made me feel uncomfortable - and probably rightfully so - was because it made me realize how much the discipline of history, the one I'm most familiar with, fails to engage with so much around it. The irony isn't lost on me that, in theory, history is supposed to be everything, right? And yet, and I include myself in this, we often fail to connect the past to so many different chains of networks that makes me think that historians aren't doing enough when we separate categories that don't really exist. Talk about an existential crisis...<br />
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Shifting gears a bit, Laura Levitt's essay in her upcoming manuscript explores how objects relate to understanding trauma. Levitt uses Edmund de Waal's book <i>The Hare with the Amber Eyes </i>as a lens towards understanding how objects serve as a window looking at the Holocaust. The way that Levitt explores how objects can also serve as a route to justice in situations such as these reminds me of the shifting emotional responses that crop up when we have these conversations about our relationships to objects. It has certainly defined my own project for me. I initially thought that my emotional response to my license plate was unimportant. The most that I felt when I looked at or thought about it was slight nostalgia for a time that I never live through. But as I discovered how an everyday object with such high visibility was manufactured in a prison with such poor conditions - a seemingly invisible place - I was repulsed and intrigued by it. I wondered what my findings meant beyond my project. I'm still trying to figure that out, but Levitt's essay helps me to think about how objects can relate to social justice.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-53027391434844754912016-04-11T16:49:00.002-07:002016-04-11T17:45:46.280-07:00The Senses<div class="MsoNormal">
This
week’s readings on soundscapes are helpful in trying to understand another facet of material culture study. Mark M. Smith traces the historiography of sound
in history and argues that the history of sound allows historians to enhance our
understanding of the past and helps us to see how past peoples interacted with
their environments. Looking at three different examples, Smith shows that sound
studies are not just a minor perspective, but that this entire methodology is
an opportunity to explore more than just the things that we can see. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One
example that Smith draws upon in his historiography is Emily Thompson’s <i>Soundscape of Modernity</i>. Focusing on the
first three decades of the twentieth century, Thompson looks at architecture,
among other things, to understand how Americans in urban spaces such as New
York, Boston, and Los Angeles shaped their built environment around their cultural
constructions of sound. Sound, shows Thompson, helped to create modernity,
which she defines as efficient, a commodity available for consumption, and an
overall sense that humans had “technical mastery” over the environment.
Thompson shows us how we can use sounds to understand place and time, which
will certainly be helpful in my project. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I
first began researching my project on the license plate, all I could think
about was the loud noises that must have been created as it was manufactured.
Once I located my plate’s provenance, the sounds, conversations, and uproars of
the Western State Penitentiary and the male inmates who made these plates between
1971 and 1976 became even more intriguing to me. This made me think about how its
location shaped the area's sounds as well. Located just outside the city of
Pittsburgh, a major steel manufacturing town until 1980 or so, is equally important
to understanding Western State’s surrounding conditions. As deindustrialization
crippled Pittsburgh during these years, I wonder about how the city’s
soundscapes changed over time. I wonder if they became quieter over time as
factories were abandoned, rendering Western State and the surrounding area even
more invisible than they may have already been. Thompson’s source base is helpful
in my project in the sense that it helps me to understand how the built environment of the penitentiary
created a soundscape that shaped the reality of those who encountered and
created it every day. <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-69953616783955467692016-04-04T15:07:00.000-07:002016-04-04T15:07:05.126-07:00Memory and Materiality<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">With last week’s readings still
fresh in my mind, I see concepts from Daniel Miller’s work in <i>Stuff </i>within historian Kirk Savage’s <i>Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves</i>. Miller
reminded us that objects make us, just as we shape them. Savage shows us the
politics of this exchange during one of the most defining periods of American
history – Reconstruction. Specifically, Savage examines the monuments designed
and erected throughout the United States that served to commemorate and
memorialize the Civil War. He comments on how the academic traditions of
sculpture literally shaped and limited how sculptors created monumental designs
to reimagine and recreate the new racial order supposedly created after the
abolishment of slavery. Sculptors and commemorative groups contended with these
new meanings, but often ended up harkening back to a time that perceived blacks
in a childlike, liminal phase and celebrated a white, male paternalistic model
of civilization. What this shows us is that monuments offer a window into
understanding how blacks and whites, the North and South, visualized their post-Civil War reality that the American Revolution had failed to achieve.
Through the structural study of these monuments, we see that while slavery was
abolished, the underlying paradox of oppression and freedom was perpetuated. Civil
War monuments allowed privileged Americans to shape the past on their terms to
face their nebulous present. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Which raises the point that Savage
not only succeeds in talking about the history of memorialization, but his work
serves as a good public history conversation as well. Savage helps us
understand how late nineteenth century Americans built their history through
objects, but what about now? How are the objects we choose in the museum
setting shaping the audiences we will work with every day? Ken Yellis offers some
insight into this conversation. Focusing on the <i>Mining the Museum</i> exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society
in the early 1990s, Yellis explores the sometimes contentious relationship
between museums and their audiences. The artist behind <i>Mining the Museum</i> brokered an interesting juxtaposition of objects,
such as the Ku Klux Klan hood and the baby carriage, to explore the museum’s
history, but it was also at the cost of some backlash as well as positive
responses. That was over twenty years ago – have we learned better ways to talk
about the objects public historians use to tell stories about the past? Because
if we are to listen to Savage and Yellis, this stuff matters and has tinges of
a moral imperative as well. I admit that I don’t have an answer to the questions
I’m asking, but it’s made me remember the pressures and responsibilities that
come with public historical work. Even when objects are no longer used for the
same intent for which they were first built, we’re still using them for
different purposes. We need to be better about talking about the fluidity of objects
and the built environment if we are to show our public that artifacts and history
never existed in a fixed past. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-68701114456191497562016-03-28T18:32:00.000-07:002016-03-28T18:32:08.968-07:00Commodities and Consumption<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> This week’s
readings ask us, once again (and perhaps more explicitly this time), to
reconsider how we view the relationship between ourselves and things. British
anthropologist Daniel Miller cautions at the end of his aptly titled book <i>Stuff</i> that “denigrating material things,
and pushing them down, is one of the main ways we raise ourselves up onto
apparent pedestals. From this height we make claims to a spirituality entirely
divorced from our own materiality and the materiality of the world we live
within” (156). We are challenged to discard the notion that objects are
superficial and reinsert ourselves into a world filled with objects that we
make and that make us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Miller starts off this
conversation in <i>Stuff </i>and walks us
through his unconventional approach to material culture. His aim is not to
define or create convention for material culture studies, but to show us that
variations exist in how we interact with the things around us. My favorite
chapter in <i>Stuff</i> that drives
this point home is his case studies on clothes in Trinidad, India, and London.
Miller shows us that clothes don’t just say something about who we are, but
sometimes they become a part of us. For example, Miller discusses the sari in
India and how it almost serves as an extension of the women who wear them. By
examining this, “we can see that there are a multitude of different
expectations and experiences that are a direct result of wearing a particular
item of clothing” (31). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Miller
also challenges us to think about universalism and particularity as not in
opposition, but that we should think about how and
where these ideas might exist in one another. Igor Kopytoff eschews the
polarization of another dichotomy, people and things, in “The cultural biography
of things.” Kopytoff argues that objects, like people, also have biographies
that are informed by various contexts – economic and cultural, and I might even
add racial, gender, social, etc. Seth Bruggeman employs this perspective in his
cultural economic biography of the Shenandoah River gundalow and how it helped
drive Shenandoah Valley’s economy during the nineteenth century. This biography
is intriguing because it looks not just into the gundalow’s original use, but
also looks at its <i>reuse</i> later on. I
was interested to read this because it made it clear that stuff has a life that
extends past its original intent. It adapts and is adapted to new cultural
constructs all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Kopytoff’s
perspective isn’t just useful in Bruggeman’s study, but it’s also helpful for
my project, as so far as his idea that conflicting identities are inherent in objects. He
writes that the “drama here lies in the uncertainties of valuation and of
identity.” For example, the prison in which my bicentennial license plate was
made has a long history that stands in direct opposition to the symbolism of
freedom that my plate intends to portray. Koptyoff helps me to articulate some
of the struggles I’ve had characterizing its conflicting meanings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Finally,
Peter Stallybrass' essay “Marx’s Coat” looks at how Karl Marx used his coat to
help make his argument that capitalism is driven by the exploitation of labor.
By giving some sort of agency to the coat, says Stallybrass, we see that the
coat serves as Marx’s access point to a privileged setting like the British
Museum. The coat as the driving force of this narrative reminds me of our first
readings for this class in Turkle’s book. Placing objects as the center of our
narratives, rather than peripheral to them, shows just how much we need our
stuff. We can’t take our stuff, just like we can’t take ourselves, out of the
culture we were born into or </span>have chosen to occupy. <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-10305245511364549842016-03-14T21:29:00.004-07:002016-03-14T21:32:03.469-07:00Place and Cultural Landscapes/Built Environments <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> This week’s readings challenge us to
think about space, time, the built environment, and cultural landscapes. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">J.B. Jackson’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is one of the most intriguing
works we’ve read in this class thus far. Jackson looks at many different kinds
of landscapes – New Mexico, mobile homes, parks, gardens, etc., where he makes
his point that space helps determine how humans interact with surrounding
environments. In turn, it engages with how humans shape those spaces. His study
in particular is fascinating because of how it looks at what his contemporaries
may have considered mundane. His extensive conversations of roads, for example,
is illustrative of Jackson’s point that roads are places, too and not just
means of getting to other places. Jackson helped me to think about the
in-between spaces that often get overlooked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> These liminal spaces, an
anthropological term to denote the “not quite” spaces during rituals, are important
themes for this week as well. One of my favorite readings in this class was Sue
Bridwell Beckham’s discussion of Southern porches as liminal spaces occupied by
women. In it, Bridwell looks at the porch as a place where social mores broke
down in courtship, black-white relationships, and gendered interactions. This
offers an insight into how historically marginalized groups exercised their
agency, often in opposition to the status quo. This is certainly relevant in
Robert W. Weyeneth’s study of the built environment of Jim Crow South, in which
he categorizes “the spatial strategies of white supremacy” to construct
environments that isolated and partitioned whites and blacks from one another.
These constructed spaces shaped how blacks and whites interacted within their racial
own groups and outside of them. Most interesting is Weyeneth’s conversation about
how African-American communities in South Carolina counteracted these
constructions by creating alternative spaces to meet their needs previously denied
to them in a segregated world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Most interesting of all is this week’s
thematic structure in which these scholars highlight the silences of in-between
spaces. It has made me think a lot about some of the silent spaces I’m not
thinking about in regards to my license plate. Thanks to Jackson, the road is another
excellent entry point into thinking about my object. What other spaces did it
occupy, and how? How, if at all, did the meanings of the license plate change
as it moved across various landscapes? It certainly helped to change visual
landscapes when present, but I’m hoping to explore how its surrounding
environments effected it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-60344718230545761952016-03-07T20:53:00.000-08:002016-03-07T20:53:12.522-08:00The Image as Object<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> This
week’s readings are particularly pertinent as I work through my project because
they offered some tools to think about the text and images on my license plate.
While intellectual Roland Barthes explains how semiotics (the study of signs
and symbols in language) helps us to understand the multiple layers of meanings
in text and images, the art historian Wendy Bullion offers her understanding of
eighteenth and nineteenth-century Philadelphia through her study of visual
illusions (trompe l’oeil) in various contemporary artworks. In both cases, they
produce rich cultural analyses through their focus on the image as object. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> French scholar Roland Barthes,
significant contributor to the study of semiotics, gives us some tools to talk
about images in his “Rhetoric of the Image.” Using an advertisement, Barthes
classifies its images as having three different messages: linguistic, coded, and
non-coded. Linguistic messages come in the form of text and often support the
messages of the images it accompanies. They serve to “fix” or anchor various
meanings into place to “counter the terror of uncertain signs” (197). Coded messages
are found in the images themselves, but a very specific cultural understanding
needs to be in place in order for someone to derive information from the
images. In the case of my license plate, this makes sense. Someone from another
country might look at the bell in the center as just a cracked bell, but almost
any American would immediately identify it as the Liberty Bell. Finally,
Barthes identifies non-coded messages that serve as literal rather than implied
representations of something. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Wendy Bullion in <i>Citizen Spectator</i> adds to this
conversation in her study of art and the larger cultural trends in Philadelphia
during the early federal period. She argues that trompe l’oeil techniques served
to emphasize the importance of seeing and awareness as a means to avoid
deception. How people saw these images and interacted with them in various
spaces throughout Philadelphia, explains Bullion, played an important role in
shaping citizenship in early America. She shows in paintings by the likes of
Charles Willson Peale that images of illusion had their own multiple, material perspectives
within the image themselves that were further compounded by the perspectives viewers
brought to it. This is really important because while Barthes explains that several
elements are used to anchor and fix meanings in images, Bullion deconstructs
and uncovers the overt and hidden perspectives within these trompe l’oeil
pieces. Objects have perspectives, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Barthes and Bullion have given me a
lot to think about as I continue on with my project. I need to unravel some of
the imbued cultural precepts of my license plate and understand how these are
created. For example, I know just by looking at the plate that it’s a license
tag. But why do I know that? Surely someone else would view it differently, or maybe
even as a foreign object. Bullion helped me to step outside my ideas about the
license plate as a measure of state control and look at citizenship a bit more.
And how are people engaging with this particular license plate? Her extensive
conversation about people’s interactions in various exhibition spaces to images
helps me to think about license plates as another kind of social viewing. The
bicentennial plates were meant to be seen and displayed, which raises questions
about what its images communicated not only to the state but to the countless
people who drove past it at some point or another. So much to discover! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-63868304869965541612016-02-15T21:39:00.003-08:002016-02-15T21:40:30.206-08:00Tools, Technology, and Making <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Our
class is setting foot in a pottery studio in Old City Philadelphia to make our
very own pottery! In some ways, this is a self-conscious exercise in creating
something to help connect us to some of the material cultural theories we’ve
discussed in the past month. The actual creation and manufacture of my own
object, the Pennsylvania bicentennial license plate, is what intrigues me the
most about its history. Who really owns it before, during, and after its
production? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Professor of furniture design David
Pye offers a framework to help us understand two different kinds of craft and
workmanship. Free workmanship is a type of production which Pye associates with
risk. There is no predetermined end result, which accounts for the risk that is
involved in achieving an imagined final product. This risk, according to Pye,
does not exist in regulated workmanship. This is one in which the final result
is predetermined and cannot be altered once the process of production is set in
motion. Pye also thinks about the idea of quality – things of “best” quality
are more expensive in comparison to something of “ordinary quality” (Pye 348). This
makes me think of its value, a monetary one in the context in which Pye uses
the phrase. I imagine that its value relates to its function – just how well
does an object serve its intended purpose? And what cultural markers surround
its production and public perception that makes a group determine something as valuable
or not?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Evgeny Morozov engages in a
conversation about the changes in popular perceptions of “making things” over
time. The Arts and Crafts movement, explains Morozov, died out by the end of
World War I. It offered an attempt at fostering autonomy in industry, but as
critiqued women’s advocate Mary Dennett, the worker has no freedom to toil on
crafts, and she considered how this question surrounded around persistent
issues of inequality. Morozov thinks about the reemergence of the “maker”
movement in the 1960s through today. He argues that this movement serves as a
democratizing effect in which people can sidestep a reliance on a larger capitalist
system of mass production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> These readings seem to emphasize human
agency and the potential that “making” has on expressing choice and
individuality. However, in the context of my object, I’m not sure that this
necessarily applies at face value. I can’t help but think about Mary Dennett
and her critique that mass production and the cost of human labor leaves no
time for what Pye is describing as a workmanship of risk. I’ve begun
preliminary research on the production of license plates, and I’ve found several
newspaper articles that document that Pennsylvania did indeed have license
plates manufactured in prisons around the time of the 1976 bicentennial. I
cannot say for certain that my particular object was made in a prison, but it
does make me contend with this possibility. How do I create a study that examines
the agency of those who produced it, when seemingly, bodies are being used as labor to create an object that is largely used as a measure of civilian
regulation, surveillance, and control? If in theory, choice is not an option for the makers, then what
does it say about the chain of networks I’m trying to understand? I have more
questions than answers at the moment, but Pye and Morozov have helped me to
think about what can happen when choice and democratization might not
necessarily define production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-48394902550990818442016-02-08T18:38:00.000-08:002016-02-08T18:40:08.057-08:00Anthropological Approaches to Material Culture <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t read what we
have written; look at what we have done” (Deetz 260). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Anthropologist James Deetz advises
his readers to approach the past from a different kind of historical record.
Deetz’s <i>In Small Things Forgotten: An
Archaeology of Early American Life </i>(1977) reconstructs what we think we know
about early American settlements in New England and Virginia by using
archaeology to show the relationship between objects and the culture to which
they belonged. He looks at several different objects including ceramics to tap
into changes in dietary habits in early America; New England gravestones
that tell us about the shift from communal Puritan ideology to an emphasis on
the individual as a result of the Age of Reason and; housing structures and how
they conveyed changes in social structure over time. As Deetz substantiates how
objects can tell us about larger cultural functions, he takes great care to
make several important points. Most importantly, Deetz addresses his
contemporaries by reinforcing the definition of historical archaeology. A
relatively new field for his time, Deetz makes his case for its usefulness by going
to great lengths to distinguish it from prehistoric archaeology so as to make it
its own subfield. He explains that historical archaeology helps to uncover “stuff”
that textual evidence is silent on, especially historically marginalized groups.
We’ve talked about this quite a bit in class, but Deetz shows us how objects
help to uncover some of those silences created in the historical record, but also perpetuated by historians. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> This is best exemplified in his
chapters on excavating information about the African-American past. He traces
the history of Cato Howe, who was freed from slavery after his military service
in the Revolutionary War. The excavation of the community of Parting Ways
helped to shed light on Cato’s life and others. Deetz concludes this chapter by
explaining that a culturally relativistic approach is necessary to understanding
Parting Ways because an Anglo-American cultural context does not explain Cato
and the African-Americans who lived outside of that context. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> This important tenet of
anthropological study is explored in Grey Gundaker’s “Tradition and Innovation
in African-American Yards.” Gundaker employs an anthropological perspective as
he asks questions about the types of meanings that African-American yards convey.
Gundaker explores spatial relationships, organizing principles, and variations
in themes as a way to make sense of these types of meanings of the objects
displayed in the yards he studies. He writes about the objects in yards as having
a “vernacular language” and a “flexible visual vocabulary” (Gundaker 59). Deetz
likewise explains the idea that objects all have a grammar that governs them, “a
set of rules for the creation of artifacts mutually accepted by the members of
the culture producing them” (Deetz 154). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> An anthropological approach to
understanding my own object is helpful, though challenging when I have rarely
applied it in my own approach to history. However, archaeology helps me to
think about provenance. Where, how, and why was the license plate found? Anthropology
serves as a tool to listen to the language and vocabulary that the license
plate communicates. Maybe this is in the structure, or the function, or
understanding how it communicates with other license plates or even
complementary objects of identification. Employing these methods is a gateway to
reaching Deetz’s point that objects speak, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-14007040085493318692016-02-02T06:49:00.003-08:002016-02-02T06:49:29.766-08:00Week Two<div class="MsoNormal">
In this
week’s readings, we are introduced to the idea of reproduction, connoisseurship,
and other methodological approaches and issues within other fields regarding
material cultural study. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Walter
Benjamin’s manifesto explores the idea that authenticity is the first mode of
importance in determining the value of an artwork. According to Benjamin, the
historical trajectory of an object depends exclusively on the authenticity of a
particular work. The innovations of the last several centuries such as photography
and other modes of artistic expression alter the lens through which we are
perceiving reality. This causes the loss of the artwork’s “aura,” an intangible
concept that is lost when something is reproduced from an original. This
tension between a perception of reality and reproduction is certainly one that
occupies the issues of material object study, as introduced by Prown and
Fleming last week. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In
tandem with Fleming, Charles F. Montgomery is also largely responsible for
producing watershed material culture process and theory at the University of
Delaware’s Winterthur Program. In his work on connoisseurship, Montgomery
stresses the importance of being aware of larger trends that objects follow. This
means knowing the different styles and trends that may contextualize your object.
While Montgomery’s list of how to determine several descriptive attributes of
objects tends to focus more on what seems to be furniture and the decorative
arts, I found his method to be very useful to me for my license plate study.
Understanding how my license plate was used in the “form follows function”
context can really shape my findings. I’m not sure if my license plate was
simply a vanity plate to commemorate the bicentennial as evidenced by the
Liberty Bell imprinted on it, or if it served as identification for a vehicle. Whatever
the answer to these questions, the function of the object is vital to understanding
how the use of the object changes its meanings. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
following reading “Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies”
by Michael Yonan delves into the mystery of why art history has remained
distant from material culture studies. I myself have intellectually viewed the
two as distinct as well prior to taking this class. Yonan makes a call to
eliminate this divide by looking at Prown’s definition of material culture as a
way to argue that it is broad enough to encompass art as well. While Yonan
argues that consuming the two together might submerge the field of art history,
it might be a good start towards looking at artworks with a different
perspective. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally,
Jennifer L. Roberts’ essay on the transatlantic travel of American artist John
Singleton Copley’s painting <i>Henry Pelham
(Boy with a Squirrel) </i>employs a material object approach to understanding
how this painting was part of a larger system of networks. Roberts disrupts the
traditional narrative used for the painting to explain the physical travel of
the painting was a complicated ocean voyage. This was my favorite reading for
this week, since Roberts’s vividly depicts how Copley’s painting fit into a larger
maritime culture. While Roberts employs a mixture of art historical and object
analysis in her essay that might not necessarily apply to a license plate, this
is definitely a model for me to follow. I want to be able to create a history
of my license plate with a comparable amount of visual details and connections
to the larger culture that Robert was able to do so seamlessly. <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-55658406940093158312016-01-25T12:49:00.002-08:002016-01-25T12:49:38.145-08:00Material Culture Theory: Process <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> True
to the past two week’s readings that the study of material culture lends itself
to an interdisciplinary approach, this week offers five different perspectives on
material culture and provide examples of how this can be
done. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> What seems to run as the common
thread among these theoretical underpinnings is the cyclical process of
material culture studies. The process of understanding the past through the
study of objects, as evidenced by E. McClung Fleming and Jules David Prown’s works,
is an attempt to impose some kind of order on the chaos that is the past. Prown
defines material culture as “the study through artifacts of the beliefs –
values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions – of a particular community or
society of a given time.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/IV%20-%20Spring%202016/Material%20Cultures/Blog%20Post%201.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Both Fleming and Prown identify specific steps to analyze objects to get at
these beliefs. Fleming shows how identification, evaluation, cultural analysis,
and interpretation serve as an order of operations to organize objects into
piecemeal windows into the past. Prown offers a similar process, but explicitly
states that material culture methodology should be followed in a specific
sequence.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/IV%20-%20Spring%202016/Material%20Cultures/Blog%20Post%201.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
It doesn’t appear too dissimilar from a scientific method of looking at our
historical specimens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> To me, Fleming and Prown’s processes
positioned objects in a space of mediation between creator and/or perceiver and
the scholar. As a starting point, a historical subject may have expressed
implicit and explicit cultural beliefs to create or justify owning a particular
object with a specific visual and identifiable structure and elements. However,
a scholar starts backwards by looking at the structure, style, etc. to reach
the end point in the study that hopefully identifies those cultural values that created that
object in the first place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> This kind of fluid process and identification is also
discussed by Tim Ingold in his quest to champion understanding the building blocks
of objects: materials. Ingold argues that talking about an abstract materiality
obscures and creates a huge distance between the physical materials we should
really be discussing. What was most interesting to me about Ingold was that he
presented materials as part of a fluid process of exchange rather than a static
existence of objects. Materials are a part of a system that are transformed into an object,
just as all humans, animals, materials, and all matter participate in a
breathing life cycle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Material is also key to English
potter Edmund de Waal, profiled by <i>New
York Times</i> contributor Sam Anderson. De Waal reminds us that it’s not
enough to just look at his finished products, but to take a step back to look
at the porcelain that makes his art possible. Porcelain and all other materials
are the foundation for the stuff we have. If we don’t look at it and try to
understand it in all of its parts, why does the object even matter? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Which brings me to the most puzzling
question I’ve been thinking about since last week’s class. <i>When</i> do objects matter? Carolyn Kitch addresses this in her look at
different media such as magazine covers, postcards, and her father’s possessions
from his military service during World War II. Kitch asks her students to think about
what stuff of theirs might be left behind one day for historians to find. Laurel
Thatcher Ulrich also looks at what’s been left behind of furniture to teach us
something about what these furnishing say about gender relations in colonial
New England. It comes back to the idea of cycle. Objects have a life cycle – they
are created, are used, and then they sometimes become obsolete, anachronistic,
irrelevant, etc. What I wonder is: when do they become relevant to the
historian for study? It is this dormant phase of the cycle between when the
object is out of use and when it becomes useful for study that interests me the
most. I hope to explore this more as I study my own object.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div>
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<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/IV%20-%20Spring%202016/Material%20Cultures/Blog%20Post%201.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> <span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory
and Method,” <i>Winterthur Portfolio </i>17,
no. 1 (Spring 1982): 1. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/IV%20-%20Spring%202016/Material%20Cultures/Blog%20Post%201.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> <span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Ibid., 7.</span> <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-26757367199856822222015-12-13T11:49:00.000-08:002015-12-13T11:49:20.738-08:00The Value of Archives for Students of History <div class="MsoNormal">
On our
last day of class, we discussed our evaluation of this Archives and Manuscripts
course. We unanimously agreed that records management was our least favorite
thing to learn about, but as is the way with records management, it’s a dry,
but necessary component of understanding archives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of
the questions that I had tinkered with throughout the semester was: Why aren’t
all of the history graduate students required to take this course? And what
about the undergraduate history majors? To me, it just seemed obvious. If
historians-in-the-making aren’t aware of how records are created and placed in the
archives, how can they more competently question the sources with which they’re
working to construct their various arguments? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is
not to say that no one has discussed archives in traditional history courses.
My historical methods class delved into power and silences in the archive, but
focused very little on these creations. The archives are one of the primary, if
not <i>the </i>primary source, of information
for historians. The provenance of documents is just as important as their
contents. Historians, myself included, need to understand how records change
hands and what this means for the information that they’re using to create
their historical arguments. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I
said in class, I think taking this course in a modified version for
traditional-track history students would be beneficial to training historians
more effectively. As evidenced in several comments in class, there is a working
tension between the academy and those outside of it. But to more effectively
practice history, there needs to be some sort of consensus in how public and
office historians can work together. Taking a course in archival theory might be a step towards achieving that goal. <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-79256448748213729072015-12-13T11:24:00.003-08:002015-12-13T11:24:35.168-08:00Oral History - Immediacy <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> Oral history is the process by
which interviews are recorded to document the lives and stories of everyday
people as they describe their experiences during important historical events.
As I conducted my research for my final paper, I found that several scholars
had traced the roots of oral history to the archives themselves. Several
archives create oral history projects and its own archivists even conduct these
interviews to expand the scope of their collections in support of their
mission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> One particular example that I
found to be the most fascinating was Columbia University’s September 11, 2001,
Oral History Narrative and Memory Project. In the days and weeks following
9/11, Columbia’s </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Oral History Research Office prepared the project to
interview as many different people as possible to gain an understanding of
people’s thoughts and emotions of those living in New York City in the midst of
the chaos. It was an inclusive project, recording the voices and memories of hundreds
of people, including Afghan-Americans, immigrants, refugees, and other
marginalized groups who faced fear-based violence from other Americans in such
a time of uncertainty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> What
most interested me about the project was that the project was conducted just a
few weeks after 9/11. During my first week of graduate school last year, I
learned that one of the four pillars of public history is immediacy. Public
historians ask themselves what a particular community needs at any given
moment. In the case of Columbia’s project, the immediacy of 9/11 was more than
evident. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> I do
think that conducting projects in the midst of important events serves to create
a valuable piece of historical documentation for the future. However, it is
also concerning that the oral historians in this case are also affected, at
least indirectly, by the events of 9/11 as well. They lived, worked, and played
in New York City and its surrounding areas just as their informants did. Archivists,
of course, are never neutral in any of these scenarios, but their participation
in this project is especially contentious because they also have experiences
that may color the way in which they conduct interviews. Perhaps this is a positive
thing because it becomes a way to connect with informants and potentially
better shapes the narrative. Either way, Columbia’s foresight in creating this
record will be an invaluable record of one of the most defining moments of
American history. </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-2637776531327269382015-12-11T20:47:00.002-08:002015-12-11T20:47:33.475-08:00On Preserving Star Wars Audio Tapes I always receive a shocked reaction (and sometimes outright anger) when I reveal that I have never seen <i>Star Wars</i>. I promise it's on my list, but training to become a public historian has taken up quite a bit of my time at the moment.<br />
<br />
But what I did recently learn about <i>Star Wars </i>is that to pres<span id="goog_351640831"></span><span id="goog_351640832"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>erve the audio recordings of the original films, Hollywood engineers are baking the tapes as a method of preservation![<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/hot-yoda/419454/" target="_blank">1</a>] I remember we had discussed this method in class, but it was intriguing to see this process was used on such a valuable piece of popular culture.<br />
<br />
Baking the audio reels helps to slow the process of "sticky-shed syndrome," a condition in which the glue that holds the magnetic tape together begins to come apart. Baking the reels at a low temperature helps to reactivate the magnetic bonds for a period of time, but it can do only do so much and is only sometimes effective. This is an issue faced at other archives as well, though I wonder about the precedents of this method. <i>The Atlantic</i> reported on this strange preservation case, citing other precedents in which The British Museum bakes the cuneiform tablets at over 1300 degrees Fahrenheit. While the <i>Star Wars</i> reels are baked at very low temperatures, it is an interesting measure to slow deterioration.<br />
<br />
In 2002 Jim Wheeler created the <i>Videotape Preservation Handbook</i>. In it, Wheeler describes the symptoms of "sticky-shed syndrome." A strange gummy film develops on the tape's surface, which over time, can begin to distort the film itself. Wheeler explains that the baking process should be repeated to continually solve the problem, but it is no permanent fix. [<a href="http://www.amianet.org/sites/all/files/WheelerVideo.pdf" target="_blank">2</a>]<br />
<br />
What is certainly interesting about this particular example is that science, archival preservation techniques, and popular culture all feed into one another. The deterioration process is for the time being inevitable, but measures are being taken to convert the film to other formats so that not all is lost.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-37355698726091779622015-11-27T21:24:00.002-08:002015-11-27T21:24:43.033-08:00A Case of Strange Provenance <div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> An isolated incident of apartment
renovation in Budapest turned into an archival miracle and historical
breakthrough. </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The Telegraph </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">reports
that while a Hungarian couple renovated their Budapest apartment this year,
they found Holocaust-era documents tucked into a hole in the wall. What was
hidden in the walls were 6300 immaculately preserved 1944 census records that
documented Budapest just before the liquidation of its over 200,000 Hungarian
Jews. The documents listed the name of every individual that lived in each
apartment building in Budapest, including inhabitants’ religious affiliation.
After the census was completed, large groups of Hungarian Jews were moved into “Yellow
Star Houses.” With this discovery, historians can better understand the latter
two years of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Hungary. You can read more
about it here: </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/12009564/Nazi-holocaust-documents-found-behind-wall-of-Budapest-apartment.html" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/12009564/Nazi-holocaust-documents-found-behind-wall-of-Budapest-apartment.html</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The discovery is not only intriguing
for its content, but also for the physical condition of the records. The couple
donated the records to the Budapest City Archives, where head archivist <span style="background: white;">Istvan Kenyeres</span> was astounded at the pristine
state of condition of the documents. With the exception of yellowing, the ink
was still legible on the documents. The archival staff is now working to
literally iron out the papers for future storage and use. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> But what is most intriguing is that
the documents were found within the encasings of <i>a wall</i>. We’ve discussed in class that archivists make extensive contacts
with donors and other institutions in locating sources of documents. However, I
imagine that the strange discovery of documents like this makes provenance an
interesting factor in assessing the history and value of the records. <i>The Telegraph</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">
doesn’t make mention of any understanding of how the records ended up there in
the first place. Who stored them there and why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> This is an interesting case study in
how documents are found, and I imagine that archivists come across situations
like this at least once in their career. I wonder what other documents are out
there hiding somewhere just waiting to be found. Finding out how they were
placed where they were is the challenge of provenance, especially in a
situation like this where secrecy was likely involved. I hope the answer sheds
light on the content of the documents themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-81546112207640679882015-11-18T12:32:00.000-08:002015-11-18T12:32:02.685-08:00Otto Frank as Co-Author of Anne's Diary: Issues of Copyright and Authorship <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">On November 13, </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The New York Times</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> released an article that announced that the
copyright on “The Diary of Anne Frank” would be extended for another seventy years.
Initially set to expire on January 1</span><sup style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">st</sup><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> in many parts of Europe, the
diary’s copyright was extended after Anne’s father Otto Frank was designated
co-author for his editorial contributions. The Swiss foundation that owns the
copyright declared that this entitled an extension of copyright. Otto Frank
died in 1980, so the copyright is set to end in 2050. You can read more about it
here: </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The situation is also complicated by
the fact that Anne’s legacy is managed by several different parties. This includes
the Anne Frank House museum in the Netherlands and the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds.
For the last five years, the Anne Frank House had been working with historians
and researchers to publish a web-based version of the diary once it came under
public domain. However, these efforts will not immediately launch as a result
of these proceedings. Following the war, Mr. Frank dispersed much of Anne’s tangible
legacy to various institutions, which makes the matter more complicated. We’ve
seen this time and again in issues of ownership and copyright when things are
donated to archival institutions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> It is also a basic issue of creator
and provenance. The Anne Frank House museum issued a statement and countered that
Anne is the sole author of her diary.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/III%20-%20Fall%202015/Archives%20and%20Manuscripts/Blog%20Post%207.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
However, an extension of the copyright will limit Anne’s legacy rather than
further it, which seems counter to what the Anne Frank Fonds wants to accomplish.
The stewards of the Anne Frank Museum, as part of their mission, hope to “disseminate”
the life of Anne as widely as possible. This recent development hinders in some
ways their ability to achieve their mission. It will be interesting to see how
the story plays out and how the archival institution within the House museum
fights to demand that the copyright enter into the public domain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/III%20-%20Fall%202015/Archives%20and%20Manuscripts/Blog%20Post%207.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> http://www.annefrank.org/en/News/News/2015/November/Copyright-diary-papers/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-42537150589821560612015-11-11T09:26:00.002-08:002015-11-11T09:26:22.118-08:00Digitization <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In this week’s readings, we
were introduced to the world of digitization – a world still without a compass
for navigation the digital realm, but one which archivists and other cultural
institutions are bravely taking on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The historian Roy Rosenzweig,
founder of the Center for New Media at George Mason University, wrote an
article that described the pitfalls of the digital era. How will historians
craft their histories when there is even more information and documents to
choose from? This “culture of abundance” makes it more challenging to construct
histories, especially when future historians will work with digital documents
that are even less stable than their paper counterparts. Rosenzweig published
this article in 2003, and today’s world is vastly different just twelve years
later. We now have Google Drive and various cloud services, the iPhone, among
other innovations. But many of these questions and problems still remain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s especially difficult when
you’re working even just to digitize paper documents, let alone worrying about
born-digital files. Digitization efforts cost institutions quite a bit of
money, and institutions are already strapped for cash. I found it interesting
that Rosenzweig made a call for historians to also concern themselves with the
preservation of digital material. I’m not sure under which model this would
happen, seeing as graduate programs are already under such financial and
staffing constraints. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even so, Rosenzweig makes a
major point. Historians are substantial archival users, and they should also
concern themselves with these materials as the profession moves further into
the digital era. Archivists, however, will play a major role in assessing the
value of this information in order to weed out information that will undoubtedly
take up too much space. I’d be interested to see if any collaborations
transpire between historians and archivists as the trajectory of the history
profession moves towards the digital course. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri Light;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-74366006367073851962015-11-06T11:20:00.003-08:002015-11-06T11:20:46.939-08:00Outreach - NARA at Philadelphia <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This week, we discussed another facet
of an archives functions – outreach and advocacy. Initially, I saw the two
terms as being synonymous, though upon examining the readings and listening to
our class discussions, it became clear that while they feed into another, they
are two different functions. Oftentimes, outreach and advocacy occur
simultaneously. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Discussing outreach in class reminded
me of an initiative that I became aware of when I was first introduced to the
world of cultural institutions in Philadelphia. About three years ago, I
volunteered at the National Archives at Philadelphia (Hi, Grace!), where I
worked with its education specialist, Andrea “Ang” Reidell. I worked on a few
different projects in the education department. I helped Ang with several
teacher’s workshops, National History projects, and a myriad of other outreach
initiatives. But the one that stuck out to me the most was her project with
Esperanza Academy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Esperanza
Academy, a Philadelphia high school, has a large number of Hispanic students.
Ang developed a partnership with the school to bring in students to use the
archives to create family histories, a project called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Historia de Mi Familia. </i>Many students’ families had emigrated
from Puerto Rico, which meant that as a commonwealth of the United States, NARA
had these holdings. Students not only developed skills in archival literacy and
primary source documents, but they constructed stories and projects based off
of what they found. The project also expanded further when many students
interviewed their family members and looked within their own families’ treasure
troves of photographs and letters that might help them to construct a narrative
of their ancestry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
project was an effective way to increase NARA’s visibility and strength its
relationship to different corners of the city, but it also gave students
valuable skills. As we discussed in class, however, many cultural institutions
don’t have adequate staff that can take on such large-scale recurring projects.
The value of the archives in this regard is apparent, but more needs to be done
to expend more resources on similar initiatives. I hope to see and contribute to
different outreach models that enhance an institution and its surrounding neighborhood
of users. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-32445592249966762722015-10-30T12:08:00.002-07:002015-10-30T12:09:21.825-07:00Lost Documents: The Case of the "Declaration of Sentiments" About two weeks ago, the <i>Washington Post</i> published an article entitled "White House is searching for the origins of women's rights." Reported the article, the White House chief technology officer Megan Smith wanted to track down the "Declaration of Sentiments," the document passed at the 1848 Seneca Falls convention organized by and for women in the pursuit of equal political, social, and economic rights. You can read more about it here:<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/14/the-white-house-is-searching-for-the-origins-of-feminism">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/14/the-white-house-is-searching-for-the-origins-of-feminism</a>/.<br />
<br />
The only problem is: the document is missing and seems to always have been.<br />
<br />
We know the exact contents of the document because it was published by <i>The North Star</i> and undoubtedly a part of contemporary national media discourse. Smith attempted to track down the original Declaration at the National Archives, but because it's not a federal document, it was never housed in any NARA institution. So, Smith is essentially going on a national hunt to see if anyone knows where it might be housed.<br />
<br />
Is the Declaration housed in an archives? Is it owned by an individual? Or, is it gone forever? The value of the document is obvious, but its absence speaks volumes. For me, the issue is more than just that its missing, but who will house it if it's ever found? David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, explicitly stated that it was not currently housed at NARA. However, I wonder if the federal government would ever take possession of it. Perhaps it would be appropriate for the document to be housed in Seneca Falls, New York, but to accession it as a federal document would also make a watershed moment in women's history central rather than peripheral to the American historical narrative.<br />
<br />
Either way, I hope it's found one day. And even though the document itself is lost, its central concept of equality for women has certainly not been lost on us today.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-6284822204348804112015-10-23T12:30:00.000-07:002015-10-23T12:30:11.902-07:00Still Defending Archivists
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> At the beginning of the semester, we were introduced to the
question “What is an archivist?”. I wrote my first class blog on this very
topic and defined it that first week, where I wrote “An archivist processes, manages,
and makes available a variety of media that serve audiences in their pursuit of
knowledge.” Now that we’re about halfway through the semester, I thought it would
be a good time to reflect on my first definition and see d since I initially
wrote it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
last couple of weeks, though, I’ve noticed that my own definition is a scant
coverage of what archivists <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actually</i>
do. Archivists are also grant writers, budget managers, negotiators, preservationists,
timekeepers, researchers, exhibit builders, digital developers, social stewards
and communicators, etc. etc. and the list goes on infinitely. It’s certainly a
far cry from “the archivist in the stack” image I had before going to college. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
that captures the nuance, importance, and challenges of the archival profession,
it still doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. Why are the archives
themselves important – and how would I articulate that value for someone in an
elevator speech? We’ve seen over the weeks, as has argued David Bearman in his
chapter on “Access and Use” that archives are only reaching small portions of
the population. About one in four people will access the National Archives at
least once.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/III%20-%20Fall%202015/Archives%20and%20Manuscripts/Blog%20Post%20-%20What%20is%20an%20Archivist.docx" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Archives
are important because they are the sources of information that promote a stake
in society, both in the past and the present. Perhaps the sooner archives are
introduced in our educational lives, the more people are aware of their value. This
isn’t a new argument, but if there is more an investment archives from beginning
educational ages with programs such as National History Day, archivists might
have to spend less time defending their profession and their collections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Joana/Desktop/Grad%20School/III%20-%20Fall%202015/Archives%20and%20Manuscripts/Blog%20Post%20-%20What%20is%20an%20Archivist.docx" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> David
Bearman. "Access and Use." Chapter 4 in Archival Methods. Pittsburgh:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Archives and Museum Informatics Technical
Reports</i>, Vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 1989. pp. 39-48.
http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/archival_methods/#ch4.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-18025039364244806522015-10-09T13:27:00.000-07:002015-10-09T13:36:17.151-07:00Disaster Management: 1973 Fire in St. Louis at the Military Personnel Records Center <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this week's class, we discussed several different topics including audiovisual and photographic preservation, as well as the difference between conservation and preservation. What I found to be most interesting was our discussion on disaster management. Having worked at several institutions where disasters have occurred, I've witnessed firsthand the implications of unexpected events, even if the institution was properly prepared. </span></span><br />
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This past summer, I interned at Independence National Historical Park, where a fire broke out in the basement of the Second Bank of the United States. I worked on the conservation effort helping to mitigate soot presence on over 10,000 artifacts. However, it is intriguing to see how the cleanup and conservation effort is handled in an archival setting where not only the physical copies can be damaged, but the actual information contained within them can be permanently erased. </span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A particular case study is the July 1973 fire that erupted within the Military Personnel Records Center (MPRC) just outside of St. Louis. The MPRC held over 22 million records that documented the service of Army, Army Air Force, and Air Force veterans between 1912 and 1963. You can read more about it here: <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2013/spring/stl-fire.pdf" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.archives.gov/<wbr></wbr>publications/prologue/2013/<wbr></wbr>spring/stl-fire.pdf</a> </span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">While the fire damaged over 70 percent of the MPRC's records, the incident proved fundamental in sparking new disaster management protocols. This included installing fire suppression sprinklers, as well as new strategies for conserving damaged documents. The first thought that comes to mind, however, is: how are veterans and their families to access records that relate to them if they've been damaged? The Records Reconstruction Branch helps to make the information in burned records available to those who seek it, though some information is undoubtedly lost forever. It is certainly a loss of power for an archives, but it also affects veterans' access to important benefits they are eligible for through the state. </span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Disasters within archives, such as this one, are detriments to larger archival functions and purpose. However, they established precedents that demonstrated the importance of preparedness for possible disasters and protocols for appropriate response. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-26947065396509818022015-10-02T14:56:00.001-07:002015-10-02T14:58:06.476-07:00The Power of Archives<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">This past week, our classmates took the floor to discuss various topics in the archives world that pertained to our particular interests. I noticed that the nature of the archival focus was split between the class. While half of us focused on individual archives, others spoke about local archival institutions or an online archival presence. About half of us spoke about federal records site, which was an intriguing opening to a conversation about the inherent power of the archives. </span><br />
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The focus on U.S. government-owned archives is not surprising. It often has the most visibility, as it documents a "grand sweep - type" history of the United States. It is one of the biggest sources of historical power. As Mark Greene explained in "The Power of Archives", the power of the archives and the archivist comes, in part, from "shaping the historical record." (Greene 20). As the visibility of government archives is often more apparent than private ones for its roots in authority, it seems to represent those who are powerful and neglects the powerless.</span></div>
<div class="" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 10em;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">So, how do you represent groups that are all but absent from the archives? Keith brought up in last week's class some of the readings that we had consulted our first year of graduate school that delved into this issue. The historian <span style="color: #333333; line-height: 1.5;">Saidiya Hartman, in "Venus in Two Acts" wrestled with properly documenting the experiences of enslaved women in the Atlantic world. Hartman articulates the ultimate struggle, "I</span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px; text-indent: 13px;">s it possible to construct a story from “the locus of impossible speech” or resurrect lives from the ruins?</span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px; text-indent: 13px;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px; text-indent: 13px;">Can beauty provide an antidote to dishonor, and love a way to “exhume buried cries” and reanimate the dead?</span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px; text-indent: 13px;">" (Hartman 2).<br /><br />Historians can't transcend what does exist in the historical record. That would violate the virtues of our profession and some semblance of truth that exists. Even so, archives hold all sorts of documents that can lead us to historically oppressed groups, but it sometimes takes being a little creative. I've had friends tell me they search all kinds of archives for store registries for purchases made by women, or journals, and any other number of ways to document the experiences of those silenced by the archives. Government archives hold power, but local archives do, too. It just takes a little bit of searching. </span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-37102213287033702032015-09-18T17:14:00.002-07:002015-09-18T17:14:15.663-07:00Archives as the Site of Social Action and Retribution<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> In last
week’s readings and class discussion, we came across a case in which the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was contacted in heavy waves
by Japanese-Americans in the 1980s who were forcibly held in internment camps
during World War II. In order to be compensated by Congress and seek
retribution, they were asked to prove their internment. (David Bearman, “Access
and Use,” Chapter IV). For a student like me who uses archives almost
exclusively for academic work, it’s a reminder that archives are sites not only
established for the pursuit of academic knowledge, but in search of a personal
and social one as well. Archives can serve as power tools for social and
political action in the pursuit of retribution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> I
encountered a situation directly this past March while I was researching at
NARA in College Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. While waiting
for my new researcher card, I was seated next to an older gentleman. We began
talking about our reasons for visiting, to which he told me that he had
traveled halfway across the country to obtain records to prove that he had
served in a specific battle and troop during the Vietnam War to prove he was
eligible for certain veterans’ benefits. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> While I
don’t know the outcome of this man’s story, I think it speaks volumes about the
place of archives within the public sphere. Mark Greene, in his “The Power of
Archives” piece articulated democracy as one of the enduring values of the
archival profession. Said Greene, “archivists are more concerned with
governmental accountability in a republic.” (Greene 31). In many ways, as others
have argued, this is how an archives can determine its enduring value to justify
its existence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-78078929690597658712015-09-11T13:42:00.002-07:002015-09-11T13:42:38.603-07:00NARA Releases 9/11 Emails: The Politicization of Processing and Access <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What priorities decide how quickly things get
processed and made available? Last night’s class discussion, centered, in part,
on this prioritization of this goal. One of those priorities, of course, was political.
This was particularly relevant when I stumbled upon this week’s <i>New York Times </i>article “9/11 White House
Emails Capture History Through Modern Lens,” which you can read here: </span><a href="http://nyti.ms/1gbFvw4"><span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">http://nyti.ms/1gbFvw4</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The George W. Bush Presidential Library,
managed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), released
several emails sent out the morning of 9/11 fourteen years ago. While many were
not made public due to strict privacy and national security concerns, several
were released that highlight some of the day’s initial shock. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">NARA released the emails to <i>The New York Times</i> as the country commemorates
the fourteenth anniversary of 9/11. The anniversary of 9/11 as well as its presence
in very recent memory makes these emails a particularly relevant set of records
in public discourse and collective remembering. I certainly have held the trope
that scholars and historians are bulk of an archives’ visitors. But Frederic
Miller’s “Use, Appraisal, and Research: A Case Study of Social History” on
social historians’ use of archives has debunked that notion. Everyone accesses
archives; scholars are just a minute percentage of users. (Miller 374). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The NYT article demonstrates that as well. Archivists
are more visible than we think they are, so their audiences are far-reaching
and ever-present. NARA’s decision to release these previously classified items
indicates the politicization of processing and release. But it further indicates
archivists’ participation in modern-day discourse and shaping of memory and
national conversations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">While I wish I could say that I was in the
board room meetings when NARA decided to release these records, I imagine that
it was challenging and maybe even polarizing. However, I’m sure that these
archivists were unanimous on their appraisal value, but how do we determine the
value of other records that may at first look less immediately significant? I
hope to explore this more as the class goes on! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-21307879328398945582015-08-28T15:53:00.003-07:002015-08-28T15:53:44.632-07:00What is an Archivist? <div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> My favorite thing about blogging is
this that I can trace how my ideas evolve over time. It’s a document of
where I started and charts the time frame that led me to where I am now in my thinking.
Continuing my public history blog for my Archives and Manuscripts class is a
way for me to think about how I define the archivist’s profession after one
class and see how I articulate its purpose a few months down the line in
December. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Margery, my professor, asked us at
the end of this week’s class to think about how we would define in an “elevator”
speech the purpose and value of an archivist and the archives profession. It
got me thinking. How would I define it right now?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Well, I would say, “An archivist
processes, manages, and makes available a variety of media that serve audiences
in their pursuit of knowledge.” This definition, though, comes from the perspective
of a researcher who has used archives extensively in the past. I’ve looked at
archives as a way to acquire the information that I need and seen archivists as
the medium through which I could obtain this knowledge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> However, I had been unaware of how
archivists viewed themselves and their profession until I read Mark A. Greene’s
“The Power of Archives: Archivists’ Values and Value in the Postmodern Age.” Explained
Greene, many, including myself, view archivists as people who simply “do.” This
is in large part due to a lack awareness of archivists’ own power. But that
leaves out the larger mission that archivists work towards. It also leaves out
from the larger conversation their power in shaping the historical record. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Having read Greene’s piece has made
me wrestle with my own definition that I came up with above. This is a
challenge that I hope to further refine in my blog as the semester continues. My biggest revision in my definition and in my general view of the </span>archivists'<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> profession is that archivists are active shapers of the historical process.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2714666037297814990.post-89324348694854030152015-08-04T19:28:00.004-07:002015-08-06T19:38:25.319-07:00Share Your Story<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> My story with
the National Park Service (NPS) officially began with my participation in the
George Wright Fellowship at Independence National Historical Park (INDE) in
Philadelphia. At least, that was the official beginning. Even so,
I suppose you could trace my trail to the Park Service much further.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I’ve always loved history. Despite
my quick stint with wanting to become a doctor in my high school years, my
passion for understanding worlds so different than my own was a paramount
interest in my life. I was an anomaly among my classmates; while others were
lost in the ticking hands of the clock until history class was over, I thought
forty minutes weren’t nearly enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> My house was a history classroom all
on its own. My parents, Portuguese immigrants, introduced me to new narratives
outside the ones I was being presented in school. Teenagers during the Revolution
of 1974 in Portugal, they told stories of a socialist regime, censorship, and
the democratic reforms that came in its aftermath. I had a personal connection
to these stories. <span style="color: #333333;">But while most of my classmates’ histories were mirrored in our
assigned textbooks and displayed in local heritage sites, I struggled to see
and identify myself in courses that truncated Portuguese history after Prince
Henry the Navigator and Vasco Da Gama.</span>
If I couldn’t see myself in it, I was determined to contribute and make myself
a part of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> My decision to major in history in
college was my attempt to become an active participant in the historical
process. I didn’t just want to write about history, but I wanted to encourage
others to be as excited about history as I was. I volunteered at different
museums wherever I could to work with audiences. My journey to personally connect
with history has directly influenced my desire to help others develop
relationships with their past and the cultural sites around them. In many ways,
I see myself in the NPS mission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> When I began graduate school to
study Public History, I became immersed in the National Park Service. During my
first semester, I read the 2014 “Imperiled Promise” report, which introduced me
to a world I had previously left unexplored. After reading the Report, I wanted
to come involved with the NPS. That opportunity came around when I applied and
was accepted to the George Wright Fellowship at Independence. Myself, along
with seven other graduate students, designed an exhibit for New Hall Military
Museum, site of the first United States War Department. It was an incredible
opportunity to witness how history “is done” within the NPS. I later combined
my interest in international and NPS history when I wrote a paper that examined
the NPS’s Division of International Affairs in the 1950s and 1960s and its
various projects abroad. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> A few months following the George
Wright Fellowship, I was invited back to Independence for a summer internship.
In January 2015, a fire erupted in the historic Second Bank of the United
States. While no damage occurred in the building, I was asked to participate in
the conservation project cleaning and restoring over 10,000 objects in the
Second Bank’s collection storage area. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The opportunity to assist in such a
vital project has been a learning experience for me. Without these resources,
we are endangering the public’s access to important artifacts that tell
multiple and intersecting stories. Working with the NPS in the conservation
effort has made me a contributor and participant in the park’s past. I’m so
grateful to be a part of it, and I want to invite others to do the same in my
future career as a public historian. The NPS makes strides to make the past
learning grounds for audiences, and I’m excited to collaborate with an
institution that takes learning about the past very seriously. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This is my story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13194233327222605955noreply@blogger.com0