A Comedic History Break

This comic from Pearls Before Swine captures exactly how I often feel about history and its aficionados:




I fell off my chair when I read this. Really. Right off.

Have you ever experienced the horror of telling someone a historical nugget that, to you, is intensely interesting, only to look at the receiver of your tale and see a thick, clear glaze over their eyes? It seems to happen to me almost every time I open my mouth.

To the historian, be they amateur or professional, tidbits of history like the one in the comic above can seem like the blood of everyday life. To others, though, they may (read: most likely) are irrelevant and dull. Part of the reason why I enrolled in the Public History program at Western was an idealistic bent of mine that wants to improve upon history-telling of the sort depicted in Pearls Before Swine.

I do not think that history has to be boring, but I admit that it often is. I have no prescription for how to change this. All I can say is that I know interesting history when I see (or hear, or read, or listen to) it, but that what is interesting to me may be lifeless to another.

I didn't mean for this post to be intellectual at all; I just wanted to share the comic. Then I got thinking about it and dug a little hole from which I cannot seem to extricate myself. So instead of trying to climb out, I'll dig deeper and request that anyone with an interest in history think before they next speak about a history topic. You may be doing more harm than good.

Public History: In Need of an Attitude Adjustment

As part of the University of Western Ontario’s Public History Program, we students must complete an internship over the four-month summer term (May-August). To help us find our internships, and clarify some questions, we had three guest speakers come to our class last month. Two are museum professionals, while the other works in the private sector as an historical consultant.

It was a great experience, and I, for one, learned a lot from the speakers. I take issue, however, with two ideas our guests presented.

The first is the negligible credibility of practicing history. One guest suggested that to be able to practice history as a career is a privilege. Fair enough, I suppose. But the same can be said for many other jobs, so this assertion really doesn’t carry much weight with me.

My real contention with the claim, though, came when the speaker suggested that it is a privilege to practice history because 150 years ago, doing history was only the purview of wealthy élite men.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I am all for looking to the past to understand the present, but that, to me, smacks of living in the past. Sure, only rich men wrote history in the nineteenth century and before, but today’s world is much, much different. Today, history is about more than just élites, and therefore can justifiably be practiced, I think, by people of all demographic backgrounds. That is a bit of a simplistic argument, I know. But to suggest that we should feel privileged today because 150 years ago only the privileged did what we do is simply irrational.

My second complaint with the guest speakers relates to the first, and has to do with compensation within the public history field, a topic about which I wrote in a previous post. Connected with the notion that we are privileged if we practice history in the public realm is the idea that we therefore ought not to be paid well for it. The payment, so goes this line of thinking, is in the very fact that we get to practice history.

What a complete crock. Historians – and public historians, especially – add worth to their communities by providing understanding and culture. That makes us valuable, wouldn’t you say? As Molly recently wrote, “Historians have a skill set just like anyone else. Other professionals are able to lay ideology aside and get on with saving the world.” And those professionals are, more often than not, handsomely paid for the use of their skill set. While Molly would like to see a world in which we historians offer our services to those in need, I think we need to service ourselves before we can help others.

Well, that was rude, Bryan. A little too blunt, don’t you think?

Yes, yes. You’re right, Bryan. My point is that engineers and medecins who offer their services with little thought for themselves can afford to do so because the training they receive and skills they possess have value, whether real or perceived. Thus, their full-time careers provide them with sufficient remuneration so as to be able to afford to offer themselves up for free at other times.

No historian would, I believe, compare what we offer to the public with saving a life. Nonetheless, until historians start to see the real worth in what we bring to the public, or until we can convince the public that what we offer them is of value, we will continue to starve and our institutions will continue to suffer.

A Public's View of Public History

Reading through the Introduction to Fanshawe Pioneer Village's 40th Anniversary Commemorative booklet, I was struck by the simplicity of the following sentence:

"The Village offers a glimpse into the past through costumed volunteers, who re-enact the chores, pastimes and occupations of the late-19th and early-20th centuries in an authentic period setting."

Wow.

Over the last four years I have heard or read the phrase "a glimpse into the past" countless times at other museums, living history sites, in books and movies, and on television and websites. Most of us, in fact, have probably heard it more than we know. It is a refrain so ubiquitous in (Canadian) popular history as to border on cliché. But never before did that specific arrangement of words hit me the way they did today.

It made me realize that I am jaded in my view of history (some might replace jaded with "educated," or"enlightened." Sure.). I remember recognizing - at some point in my undergraduate career - that my degree in history was eroding the innocent notion of history I had held for most of my life. What was replacing it was an understanding that the past was by no means as real or as tangible as I thought.

This "glimpse of the past" realization, however, was important because it will change my approach to how I present history to the public. I realize now how it is I used to think of history, which, I assume, is also how many people without academic training in historical thought might also view it (for the record, and in spite of the snootiness of this point of view, I think they do). Many people must arrive at places like Fanshawe Pioneer Village truly believing that they are visiting the past, or at least witnessing what the past looked like. Not as though they have traveled back in time, mind you, but that the people they are seeing in the present are thinking and acting in the exact ways that people in the past did. This realization is important because it gives me a clearer understanding of the expectations of the visitor / viewer / consumer of public history.

As public historians, is it our job to inform the public that no, you are not actually seeing the past, stupid, that the past is gone, never to return? Or should we aid in the suspension of disbelief necessary to further the public's engagement with some sort of semblance of the past? To take the former approach is to adopt a more academic view than the public may care to hear. But to take the latter is to fail on some level in educating the public about the past.

Maybe we should do both. Hopefully we do both. Perhaps the success of a blend of the two depends on the medium or form the "glimpse into the past" takes; I have no answer for that. I do know this, though: like Kevin, I am hungry.

Adam Gopnik on Museums

I love it when parts of my life - especially my academic life - intersect. I know other history students have had similar experiences to me, experiences in which the subject matter of one class overlaps with another. I cannot say why, but it brings me incredible pleasure to have this happen.

In both my public history class last term, and in my class on museology this term, we tackled the history of the museum. And we talked about it from a variety of points of view.

So when I heard on the CBC that Adam Gopnik would be speaking on the history and role of museums, I was, well, elated. I set my alarm clock to go off ten minutes before the program started so that I could get myself set up with pen and paper to take notes, and place a bowl of red grapes beside me (Weird, eh? You really didn't need to know that. I am trying to give you a picture. Relax).

I sat down to listen and write. Unfortunately, Gopnik is a great thinker and orator.

Sorry. I mean that it is fortunate for us to have intellectuals like Adam Gopnik out there, thinking and talking. It is unfortunate, however, that my pen cannot keep up with the great ideas he spewed forth at his talk.

On the plus side, however, the CBC’s website tells me that the talk will be available on podcast soon, so I will revisit it then. But for now, I am going to include just a few of my brief notes on what Gopnik said. I am not going to elaborate. I just want them to sit there for you (and me!) to contemplate:


The Mindful Museum. His vision of what the new museum will be.

Like Molly, he wants rid of the audio guide.

Museum as metaphor. A central arena of sociability. A central meeting place.

Adam Gopnik brings to the public what I learn in the academic world.

Museum as mall. A museum that has been drained of all of its old function.


My brother called me during the talk (another factor in my inability to keep up with Gopnik's talk). He lives in Toronto, where Gopnik's talk was recorded (at the ROM). I was doubly (twos seem to be a theme for this post, don’t you think) pleased when he told me that, firstly, he tried to go to the talk, and secondly, that he could not because it was sold out. "Packed," in his words.

I was happy he tried to go to the talk because, well, he is my brother, and the talk was on a topic close to my life. I was also glad when he told me it was sold out, because that means that many people care about museums and public history.

Of course, many of those in attendance at the Gopnik talk were probably there simply because it was a Gopnik talk; they most likely would have gone regardless of the subject matter. Nevertheless, those same people were exposed to a public intellectual expounding upon a public history subject. That means more people are thinking (and hopefully talking) about history.

Good news, I'd say. At least for us public historians.

Film, anyone?

This is a call out to the blogosphere for some help. I need some recommendations for films. For two of my classes this term I have the pleasure of writing an assignment on a film. For one course, I need to review a historical documentary. For the other, the film has to have something to do with museums.

I like film (it is one field that I might enter following the completion of my Master's), and therefore want to watch some quality films for this project.

So, any suggestions?

I should, I suppose, qualify "quality." By this term, and it is completely subjective, I mean a thoughtful, insightful, entertaining, amusing, or otherwise intelligent film. Its A Wonderful Life, is an example. Night at the Museum, is not. The Five Obstructions is a good documentary, whereas some might argue that The Valour and the Horror (don't miss all three parts), is not. American Psycho, on the other hand, is a great film, but Speed isn't.

Speaking of American Psycho, I always thought Christian Bale reminded me of someone, and a recent news item clarified it for me: I think Christian Bale and David Beckham could be brothers.




Am I way off?

Agre-avating Ecology

I took an immediately dislike to the first reading for the week of 10 October for my course in digital history. It is a chapter written by Philip E. Agre entitled, Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic and Political Contexts.

The first aspect of the article that irked me was, I must admit, that Agre proposed a vision of the future that was in stark contrast – in fact almost the exact opposite – to what I envision. In class that week, I put forth the argument that by using technology and representations of things real, as often occurs on museum websites, we are, in essence, eliminating the physical world, putting in its place a world made up of images with less depth than the objects they replace. I didn’t exactly say all of that, but I sure was thinking it.

The second aspect of Agre’s chapter that bothered me was his use of the word “ecology” to describe the environment in which he feels people will find themselves in the future. Specifically, Agre writes: “Everybody's daily life will include a whole ecology of media.”

I investigated the etymology of the word “ecology,” using two online sources, wikipedia and dictionary.com (Before continuing, I should state, for Agre’s benefit, that wikipedia was not even an idea when Agre wrote his piece in 1995, and dictionary.com had only just launched in May of that same year).

Wikipedia’s entry defines ecology as “the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment.”

Dictionary.com brought up nine different entries for “ecology.” Seven of those entries are relevant, and each of those seven had at least two definitions for the term.

Summarily, the first relates to the branch of biology within which ecology generally falls. The second term, I believe, is that which more easily applies to Agre’s use of the term, yet is still somewhat troublesome (The point of this exercise will eventually become clear, I promise). The second (or third, as it applies) definition provided in most of the dictionary.com results presents “ecology” as a branch of, or relating to sociology; that is, how humans interact with their physical and social environments. Some of the results also label this definition “human ecology.”

Now, some may argue that I am merely squibbling over details, but my distaste for Agre’s argument lies in how he applied the term ecology to mean the interaction and relationship between technologies, not organisms.

The wikipedia entry and all the dictionary.com results specify that “ecology” is an organic term. An “ecology of media” is, therefore, impossible. Unless Agre meant to infer upon these particular media an organic nature they, thus far, do not possess. Perhaps Agre, at the time of writing, felt that these media would have sufficient levels of artificial intelligence to be able to label them organic.

Granted, Agre wrote this chapter over ten years ago, and I am sure that if written today, much of his argument would change given the reality he would see around him. Nevertheless, it was a reading assigned in my class in the year 2006, and therefore must have some resonance in the digital community.

And that was just the first paragraph.

Digital Books

In his paper, “The Bookless Future: What the Internet is Doing to Scholarship,” David Bell paints a scary picture of the future when he predicts that books will soon follow in the footsteps of their now nearly-deceased relative, the card catalogue.

Digitization and online access, he tells us, is already underway for

“every issue ever printed of the New York Times; tens of thousands of classic and not-so-classic works of literature; a large majority of the books published in English before 1800; a million pages' worth of French Revolutionary pamphlets and newspapers; every issue of virtually every major American newspaper and magazine going back a decade or more; every page of most major American academic journals going back half a century; most major encyclopedias and dictionaries; all the major works of Western painters and sculptors. And much more is coming.” DAB

He also points out the bookless society’s strongest asset:

“Making vast libraries of learning available at no cost to anyone with an Internet connection is surely more important than preserving the rarefied pleasures of physical research libraries for those lucky or privileged enough to have easy access to them.” DAB

Before reading Bell’s paper, I would certainly have counted myself amongst those who, like “Writers such as Nicholson Baker… are likely to greet this much larger change with despairing howls of anger.” DAB.

While not quite fully reformed, I am more convinced of the value of e-books. I will not go out and by an e-book reader any time soon, but neither will I turn my nose up at the efforts of those who seek to enable more people more access to more books. Perhaps instead of trying to gentrify myself, I will instead applaud – and thank – those who are helping me reach new intellectual heights.