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?
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