Public History in Urban Spaces

            The readings this week focused on the role of public history in the revitalization of inner cities. Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities by Andrew Hurley examines ways to make historic preservation more effective in the revitalization of America’s inner city neighborhoods. He argues that urban communities can benefit from preserved neighborhoods through allowing the public to interpret them at the grass roots. After our discussion concerning Funeral last week, I paid particularly close attention to negative affects of historic preservation of urban areas and Hurley’s suggestions through case studies of successfully implementing preservation in cities.

           

            One in particular, that when Americans began preserving areas of inner cities rather than demolishing and rebuilding them, the process represented elitist old money. Rather than preserving historic buildings for economic reasons, elite Anglo-Americans chose this method in urban areas to highlight the Golden Era of specific areas. So while a house built in a prosperous neighborhood in the 1890s survived many different eras and types of residents—from wealthy nuclear families to low-income boarders—the preservation advocates chose to highlight the house at what they considered its grandest. The preservation projects did not embrace the community of the neighborhood, and rather isolated historic districts. In the Funeral project, it is important that we research and celebrate the entire life of the house, including different ethnic groups from different socio-economic backgrounds. In The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Dolores Hayden reminds public historians to restore meaningful shared meanings for urban spaces during similar projects.

           

            The first section of Hayden’s book emphasizes the need to find a way to interpret the work each group can contribute to the presence of the past in specific spaces in urban areas. Hurley uses several case studies to similarly emphasize the point that public historians must acknowledge shared themes that resonate with diverse audiences connected to certain spaces. Additionally, Hurley discusses the relationship between scholars and communities during public history projects. Maintaining a positive relationship is vital in completing a successful project; this point certainly applies to Funeral, where the community could easily become isolated, offended, or uninterested depending on their relationship with the scholars and artists involved in the project. One piece of advice that resonated with me is to set your academic agendas aside for those that emerge directly from the community.

Oral History and Issues of Collective Memory

            This week’s readings included two short pieces, Leon Fink’s “When Community Comes Home to Roost: The Southern Milltown as Lost Cause” and the introduction to Michael Frisch’s A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. These pieces help put the third reading, The Oral History Manual by Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan into context by using specific examples of recent oral and public history projects.

            The Oral History Manual is just that: an informative manual that breaks down the process of oral history projects into easily digestible sections, from the beginning stages of project planning through processing and care of the final product. Though I have never personally participated in an oral history project, the idea has always appealed to me and I had long assumed that oral history was as straightforward as an interview and transcription. And, boy, was I wrong. The legal and ethical concerns involved with public history stood out to me, especially the question: who will own the materials? A larger, but related question: who owns history? When involved in an oral history project, it is important to remember that the point is to learn how the storyteller or narrator understood a particular experience. The interviewer must remain neutral, even after researching extensively in preparation for the interview. I found many of the authors’ tips to the interviewers helpful, especially that an interviewer should be silent, using body language such as eye contact and nodding to reassure the narrator, rather than verbal cues. The manual did get repetitive and sometimes felt frustratingly simple, but was generally useful and helpful as we prepare to participate in an oral history project.

            The introduction to A Shared Authority similarly focused on how much can be learned from studying the process of oral and public history. Frisch argues that focusing on the process can point to political, cultural, and communicative issues that surface as progress is made. Frisch also mentions the problem of collective memory, how it is manipulated in both direct and indirect ways through time. The issue of collective memory continued in Fink’s “When Community Comes Home to Roost.” Fink’s article described the Cooleeme Historical Association and showed how the activities of the CHA raised ethical questions in public history. In connection with Kitch’s book last week, Fink points out the tension between heritage and history and asserts that heritage tends to accentuate the positive aspects of history and often overlooks the realities. Fink also highlighted issues with community history. First, individual memories are often reshaped to fit into a single mold to cooperate with specific existing interpretations. Second, that the act of creating a single community can also create borders, as was the case with the African-American population of Cooleeme, often left out of the narrative of the town’s history. These readings raised many issues common to public history projects, which should be considered as we prepare our class oral history project.

The Bigger Questions

            Several other assigned class readings this week also caused me to consider the role of public history, though in a less personal and more theoretical way. Carolyn Kitch’s Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past examines the rising heritage culture of industry around the state of Pennsylvania. One point that really stood out to me was the idea that industrial public history can be considered marketing personal tragedy. The question of tragedy tourism is a touchy one I once examined as an undergrad studying the conflict in Northern Ireland. Should money be made through marketing the violence and heartbreaking tales of those that came before us? In both PA’s industrial history and in Northern Ireland, many of those who experienced the history first hand are still living, which makes the question that much harder to answer. Many public historians—myself included—believe that in order to tell the tales of many historic sites accurately, the “tough stuff” of history must be included. For example, the story of a historic house museum can’t be told without including information about the domestic servants, or slaves in some cases, who were an integral (though sometimes invisible) piece of the house’s daily running. In Kitch’s work, she works through the idea that because of the tragic past of industrial history in the state of PA, many of the former workers are being portrayed as heroes to today’s audiences.

            This point brings me to another reading, the prologue of Denise Meringolo's A New Kind of Technician: In Search of the Culture of Public History. Meringolo asserts that debates in public history need to move away from a definition of the term, to the value of history as a public service. I agree with this point; and the authors of two other articles bring up certain points that begin to address this debate. First, Ian Tyrell in his article: “Public at the Creation: Place, Memory, and Historical Practice in the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1907-1950.” Tyrell discusses many important questions in the field of public history through his study of the MVHA from its founding. One question that stood out to me as related to Kitch’s book was that academic history often forgets the parts of history considered unimportant, and how public history can help remember these forgotten pieces of history. As a historian more interested in social, cultural, and working class history, I find these “unimportant” pieces of history to be just the opposite: the very important pieces of history, that can reveal things that popular knowledge cannot. On this point, David Glassberg points out a danger of public history in his article “Public History and the Study of Memory.” Glassberg claims that representations of public history through museum exhibits, memorials, etc. are often deliberately ambiguous to satisfy diverse audiences. While at least a portion of the task of a public historian is to create dialogue amongst the public about history and memories, the task of a historian is to question what is already known about history. Public historians walk a risky line in presenting history to the public. How do you remain unbiased while still appealing to the largest audience possible? How do you remain objective in your perspective without isolating certain groups? And how do you tell socially relevant stories to audiences who have trouble imagining certain aspects of the past, like pollution, in the present day?

Thoughts About Memory

            The assigned readings this week, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life in particular, caused me to consider my own relationship with history and, more so, memory.

            The authors The Presence of the Past surveyed over a thousand Americans from diverse backgrounds about their connection to the past and how it affects their lives. This work especially resonated with me because of the emphasis placed on family history. First, that most Americans trust the stories of their family members memories of specific events more than history books, television, and movies. When reading this finding, I considered my own feelings on the topic. While I don’t think I mistrust history books, I often find myself remembering stories told by my grandfathers and wondering how their memories fit in with whatever the author is claiming about a certain historic event. As a historian, I question many things I read and hear, but am much less likely to question the memories of my trusted family members than the theories of renowned historians.

            The reason I mention my grandfathers specifically is because both men believed in sharing their memories. Further, both men took steps to ensure their past was remembered—as Rosenzweig and Thelen describe in their legacy section found in chapter two. Daniel “Big Dan” McGuinness, my maternal grandfather, lost his first wife in the late 1960s, when their oldest daughter—my mother—was only thirteen years old.  In the late 90s, with failing eyesight and the help of his second wife, Dan wrote a book that detailed the love story between himself and my grandmother. He included photographs and had at least three books bound—one for each other their daughters. As a child I used to sneak looks at that book, stored on the top shelf of my mother’s closet, and stare at pictures of a woman I never met and a younger, less hardened version of the grandfather I knew.

            My paternal grandfather, Bill Shipley, who just passed away about six weeks ago at the age of 91, similarly recorded stories from his life. Around the same time Dan wrote his book, my grandpa Shipley purchased a computer to quickly store his infamous stories before he croaked (as he so gently put it). Though less sentimental and more humorous than Dan’s stories, they had the same idea about leaving their legacies so they would be remembered. My grandfather Shipley served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II. The majority of his stories from the war are sidesplittingly funny.

            His younger brother Raymond Shipley also served in WWII and was in the second wave of men to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Unlike my grandfather, Uncle Ray never spoke of his time overseas, except (so I’m told) in his younger years when he’d had a few drinks. So imagine our shock when, in 2004, just about a year before my Uncle Ray passed, my dad stumbled upon a website with a transcribed version of an oral history project Uncle Ray participated in. For those of you interested, this is the link to his interview— part of the Rutgers Oral History Archives. Although he didn’t openly discuss it, legacy was just as important to Ray as it was to my grandfather.

            Growing up around these three men, as well as my history-buff parents, and skilled story-telling aunts, it is no wonder I developed such an interest in history at such a young age.

A Brief Introduction

            My name is Erin Shipley and I am a second year MA student at Temple University studying history and concentrating in public history. As an undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh I majored in history and completed two internships in archives. The first internship, describing and digitizing photographs at the University of Pittsburgh Archives Center, convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in the field of history.

            At my second internship, I worked with the education officer at the City of Westminster Archives Centre in London, England. It was here, working on a project to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the Blitz, that I realized historic research—and all of the documents and objects filling the archives—should be shared with the public. I became excited about the field of public history and jumped at the chance to continue my education in history in a more creative way.

            During my first year in grad school at Temple, my coursework and internship at a local house museum allowed me to discover what I hope to do with my degree. My passion is in the research and, further, figuring out how to best tell a story through that research in an interesting and meaningful way. After I graduate, I hope to find a career where I am able to use my research skills to connect people to topics I believe are important and interesting.