Material Culture Theory: Process

           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.

            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.”[1] 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.[2] It doesn’t appear too dissimilar from a scientific method of looking at our historical specimens.

            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.

            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.

            Material is also key to English potter Edmund de Waal, profiled by New York Times 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?

            Which brings me to the most puzzling question I’ve been thinking about since last week’s class. When 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.

---

                [1] Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 1.  

                [2] Ibid., 7.   

The Value of Archives for Students of History

                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.

                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?

                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 the 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.

                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.  

Oral History - Immediacy

                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.

                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 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.

                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.

                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. 

On Preserving Star Wars Audio Tapes

       I always receive a shocked reaction (and sometimes outright anger) when I reveal that I have never seen Star Wars. 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.

     But what I did recently learn about Star Wars is that to preserve the audio recordings of the original films, Hollywood engineers are baking the tapes as a method of preservation![1] 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.

     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. The Atlantic 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 Star Wars reels are baked at very low temperatures, it is an interesting measure to slow deterioration.

     In 2002 Jim Wheeler created the Videotape Preservation Handbook. 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. [2]

     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.

A Case of Strange Provenance

          An isolated incident of apartment renovation in Budapest turned into an archival miracle and historical breakthrough. The Telegraph 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: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/12009564/Nazi-holocaust-documents-found-behind-wall-of-Budapest-apartment.html.

            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 Istvan Kenyeres 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.  

            But what is most intriguing is that the documents were found within the encasings of a wall. 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. The Telegraph doesn’t make mention of any understanding of how the records ended up there in the first place. Who stored them there and why?

            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. 

Otto Frank as Co-Author of Anne's Diary: Issues of Copyright and Authorship

             On November 13, The New York Times 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^st 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: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html.

            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.

            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.[1] 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.

---

[1] http://www.annefrank.org/en/News/News/2015/November/Copyright-diary-papers/

Digitization

                  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.

                  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.

                  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.

                  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.