American History Museum Day: Everything I'd Gained

Today I played adventurer.  Although the weather was as perfect as its been since I moved here, the day started roughly.  Since I'm an American and public historian, I decided it was finally time to visit the National Museum of American History (NMAH).  On the way there though, I almost lost it.  I was seconds away from sobbing in front of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.  You know, because I just get so choked up when I hear/see Reagan's name.  Kidding!  It was in that moment, surrounded by beautiful Romanesque architecture when every emotion I've felt since moving here hit me all at once.

I had a moment for everything I'd lost and a moment toasting everything I'd gained.

Everything I'd lost and everything I'd gained.

Although this experience had little to do with the rest of my exploring, it felt revelatory and it sets the scene,  I guess, for my solo adventures.   If I hadn't uprooted myself, it would be nearly impossible to have the wonderful day I had today, at the very least. 

I had really low expectations for the NMAH, I'll admit this up front.  As a rule, I try not to set high expectations- but also, I was a little underwhelmed by parts of the National Zoo and the National Museum of American History.  Some of the exhibits in both haven't been updated in decades.  I feared the same would be true of the NMAH.  It's not as if these fields are stagnant- we find new thing and create new interpretations of the past every day- it's just that these enterprises receive less funding than other, more glamorous (and more explode-y) sectors of the economy. 

Rebirth on my 24th, Infinite Possibility

Infinite Possibilities.  Infinite. Possibilities.  I was in grad school, busting my buns on my thesis a mere few weeks ago.  I imagined the time post-thesis and pre-moving as a space for infinite possibility.  I wanted day trips to make a travel blog or a cool YouTube channel.  I had stockpiled XL shirts in hopes of turning them into cute fitted tops and household goods.  Craft ideas and books- oh god, the books- are coming out of my wazoo.  Sifting through my computer revealed tons of notes for short stories I planned to write, including a set of Revolutionary-themed erotic novels under a pen name I find hysterically perfect.  Not to mention, countless errands and daily life things that pile up when one is tied (crying) to a computer chair, writing frantically to meet deadlines.  I even signed up to volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter to snuggle some animals.  I went to the formal orientation, but I am ashamed to say I have yet to volunteer a single minute.

I pictured my body, toned by workouts and yoga I did religiously.  I envisioned YouTube dollars.  I saw a fledgling writing career.  My music blog (which is on Blogger under a similarly styled pen name...) would explode with new reviews and interviews.  I thought I would immediately sit down and finally teach myself bass. And Spanish.  I'd meditate often, cook healthier food and bike everywhere.  I'd launch a magazine designed to empower girls.  It would look like Seventeen but with the message of a mentoring program I dedicated four years of my life to.  (This idea is totally a go, I've been slowly working on the planning aspects with a friend and have generated a fair bit of interest in the local activist community.)

On one hand, the final draft of my thesis was only approved November 16th, 9 days ago.  Between my defense date, October 29th and the University's final deadline (November 9th, more or less), I did a fair amount of work including revisions, formatting corrections and fighting a copyright battle with a less-than-helpful editor who refused to return my phone calls.  Simultaneously, the whole time I wrote my thesis, I kept telling myself, "The minute you're finished, you're going to be able to do all those things you love!" And what have I done?

NOTHING.  Not literally nothing.  I've applied for more or less every available history-related, museum-related and adjuncting job I found listed online in both public and private sectors.  I'm waiting on phone calls.  I've gotten a few rejection e-mails (Damn Veteran's Preference!  I kid, I do.  It's still frustrating!).  I went to DC with my mom on a fact-finding mission.  I found a few facts; 1. DC proper is too damn busy and too damn crowded.  2. I really enjoyed my soon-to-be town. 3. Lots of great apartments!  I have options!  Mostly, I've been watching re-runs of Roseanne and America's Next Top Model. (I can hear you judging me, stop that.)

Most importantly, I started a volunteer project with a local museum.  This museum, recently acquired by my department, is being modernized and opened to the public.  Slowly. My job is to create audio tours for the public that can be downloaded via free wi-fi and smart phone/tablet/gadget/what have you.  I really love the museum space.  I adore the office coordinator (whose name, like all other details of my life, will remain private)- she is incredible, smart, patient and kind.  In general, being at the museum, finding a way to communicate the past to a broad public audience is great.  It's what I love to do and the main reason I studied public history.  Since I finished school, this is the only thing I have done successfully, and barely so.
Some of that is my fault, for just being useless.  Some of that is the holidays; the people who will approve my scripts is out of town or in meetings or writing final exams.

The long and short of this rant is that I have yet to live up to or complete anything.  Each day, I grow more anxious.  It's not that I'm in a rush, I'm here until Mid-March.  My name's on a lease and everything.  No apartment can even give me availability this far out.  It's just that...I know how fast time slips by, especially when one is being a loaf.  All days just blend into one, uneventful, unaccomplished...blob.

I don't like feeling like a blob.  I don't like not contributing to dialogues.  I miss reading and writing.  I've whined "switching between formal and casual writing is sooo harrrrrd" for weeks.  It is hard.  But, I also wrote this whole blog in a casual voice and I didn't have one aneurysm.  Nothing is strained.  Academic writing is a struggle too, but I completed a monster Master's thesis in what my adviser called record time (ahem).   Casual writing, to me, is about verbalizing things I feel emotions towards.  It's from the heart and soul, which I've poured out here in all it's glory and failure.

So, on my 24th birthday, as a gift to myself (besides the fab massage I received earlier), I am going to rededicate myself to the infinite possibilities of post-grad life.  Finishing a thesis is a little like post-postpartum depression, I imagine.  I don't have kids, so I don't want to make light, but I literally gave a year of my life to my thesis.  I rarely took a day off, working 6-8 hours or more per day.  Sometimes, I worked twelve hours straight, not stopping to even eat or shower.  A calendar year.  Babies really are made in less time.  And how does one beat depression?  I don't really have the answer to that, but I know keeping an active mind and body is a hell of a lot more healthy than watching TV re-runs.

I pledge to myself to write a lot more, on this blog.  About books, current events (maybe, if I disable comments), and history/museums/travel.  Why segregate my interests into separate blogs?  No need! This is 2012, I am a multi-faceted person and my interests can share a blog.  (Although my music blog will remain separate, as that's a whole other alias, if anyone is interested.)   I want to write once a week on each blog.  Or more.  I want to walk dogs, do yoga, read books, take photos, start a youtube channel, run more.  All the things I promised myself.  I'm not going to let a few weeks of postpartum laziness ruin my whole, sacred time off.  How many people have the opportunity to lounge for a few months between grad school and the REAL WORLD? Not many.

Starting today, I'm taking full advantage.  Happy birthday to me.

A note on "Revisionist Historians"

The other day, I wrote a thoughtful (toot toot), albeit poorly edited (my apologies) blog about archives, how they work and how archives are affected by naturally occurring historical processes. Today, the professor I work with as a Graduate Assistant brought up a pet point of mine- revisionist history. I’ll admit, I’m a dirty-R word revisionist historian. According to talking heads, that must mean I’m out to destroy America, destroy families and education and I alone am responsible for the Red Menace, the economic downturn and TSA body scanners.

Let me alleviate your fears, dear reader. All historians are revisionist historians. Historians seek to answer historical questions, sometimes the same questions that have already been answered. To not do so, to simply accept the master/dominant narrative as it has been written is not conducive to the field. The dominant narrative exists because it provides structural framework to communicate historical events and actors to large numbers of people. This narrative changes over time (slowly) to reflect the needs and changing times. But once one looks past this dominant narrative, one becomes a revisionist merely by not accepting the dominant story as “correct.”

However. Dominant narratives are constructed. They can be patriotic (American Revolution!), parables (Washington, meet cherry tree) and can reflect biases in our own, modern day society (I promise you, in early America, women were involved in Revolutionary thought, as the very least, even if there are not countless biographies written in their memory). Some standards need to exist for the purpose of education and that is true of any field. Also, there is too much to discuss in one term. Imagine trying to teach, in one term, all interpretations of the American Revolution. Also, many interpretations are simply too advanced to teach to students who (at the level I work with, freshman college students) are just beginning to gain intellectual bearings. For these reasons (and others, although probably less altruistic), a basic, overarching narrative exists. Once we accept that, we can start to conceive of that dirty R word differently.

If you were to accept the talking heads at face value, you’d assume dirty liberal hippies, assisted by evil Muslims and Karl Marx’s disembodied head drive the revisionist movement. However, what is seen as being revisionist is often changes in historical theory, methodology and the “culture” of history, as well as technology, access and national culture. In the quest for legitimacy, historians strove to be objective. This here’s the facts, ma’am, and nothing but. Yes, this is noble; however what is considered objective changes over time. Now acknowledged as a bias, or cultural baggage, Eurocentrism used to be accepted as something factual, cool, rational and objective. Those who established slavery as an institution objectively thought it was the best method to “civilize the uncivilized.” We now understand, because of new methods, science and changes in our cultural fabric, that slavery is not only wrong, but also probably not a useful way to make outsiders feel as thought they are being “civilized” or learning a new culture. And why do we want to do this? It gives us a more accurate, complete depiction is the past, and that’s what we want from history, correct?

Now, we accept and unpack our biases, which become more clear with time. It is easy to write off older monographs as being biased and not objective, but in reality, those historians were upholding the historical standards of their time. This becomes much clearer when looking at the historiography. Take, for example, the historiography of American Indians, first, they were ignored, then seen as savages, later as victims and only with our more recent historical tools (such as understandings of agency, etc.) have historians begun to suggest American Indians had their own motivations. It’s not that earlier historians didn’t read documents correctly, or anything else it’s that they lacked the historical lenses to look at these sources in this manner. Also, the construction of the American Indian as a non-white, savage other (how Ethnocentric!) was accepted and supported by societal biases, attitudes, etc. Examining these historical players as human beings, with agency, motivations, goals, etc., helps paint a more clear historical picture, of the colonists and the Natives.

As historical lenses (theory), or technologies, change, so do people. It’s not necessarily conscious, and it’s not always malicious. There’s a phrase for this- shit happens. For instance, the Genoveses, a historian husband and wife team, used to be a left leaning, Marxist theory using historian couple. For one reason or another, they had some sort of religious epiphany and are now conservative, right leaning, etc. Where Fox-Genovese used to deconstruct gender, she now upholds gender roles. That doesn’t mean she’s a liar, necessarily, just that shit happens. Shit happened, her beliefs changed. She wasn’t trying to dupe her readers, and her change of lifestyle doesn’t invalidate her previous work. Of course, there are liars and malicious people, but people also change, and they and their work should not be thrown out entirely because of it.

New discoveries and technology can also change the historiography and challenge widely accepted theories. For the longest time, the idea that the first Natives come to America across the Beringia land bridge was the strongest theory. However, with new technology, we discovered most of North America was covered by huge glaciers AND we also found artifacts from South America, as far south as Argentina and Chile, that date earlier than North American artifacts. A new(er) theory suggests the first Americans moved down the east coast by boat- island hopping, as it’s known to historians and anthropologists. This isn’t to say the Beringia theory is out, or that it wasn’t sound- it was for its time. New technology coupled with new archaeological finds poked holes in what was formerly the dominant theory.

All this in mind- developing historical lenses/tools/theoretical frameworks, changing worldviews and societal norms, technology and potential for new discovery and new readings of previously accept works- why WOULDN’T a historian want to be a revisionist? Part of being a historian is contributing new ideas, and one does not contribute by simply accepting the dominant narrative. To not be a revisionist historian, I’ll conclude, is to simply bend over and accept the status quo, the dominant narrative as it has been handed to you. To be against looking at history with modern tools and fresh eyes is to be against historical innovation and to deny potential for new interpretations and applications of new theory.

How History Works: Archives

How History Works: Archives

There seems to be maybe, some confusion as to how historical institutions work. The most common question I hear about archives is what they contain, how they work, and why they can be lacking.

A brief history of archives- the earliest types of archives were collection held by wealthy individuals or families. They were not for the public eye, the artifacts one owned may have no relation to one another. However, these collectors kept lists of their items, which may have reflected their station in life- such as fine paintings or statues.

In their earliest days, museums were used as archives, one of their functions was just to house items. Museum Origins contains many early, and short, readings from early museum employees, owners and benefactors. The earliest museums dedicated themselves to showcasing science. History museums came later.

Currently, and most recently, archives served as a place to catalog, house and preserve artifacts. Some archives have more resources or specialize further than others, factors which may cause disparity between archives. Furthermore, what archives contain also depends on archivists take a personal stake or interest in, including prevailing historical theories.

Howard Zinn dubbed archivists as potential “activist archivists.” Awesome phrase. Archivists, like any other historian (or human) are subject to their own biases and baggage. An activist can only practice activism in context. Currently, people aren’t activists for interracial marriage, because the need for that sort of activism is not needed. Archivists can be instrumental in making new forms of historical study possible.

Some of the earliest historical artifacts don’t need to be sorted- statues, buildings, paintings, all stand on their own. Makes sense. Other early artifacts reflect not only societal biases, but material reality. Why do some archives contain more materials from elite, white men? Early history extolled the importance of this kind of history- it was all that mattered- the political, powerful elites. Also, as a historical reality, these people just wrote more and had more material possessions. Yeoman farmers had less time and less education, therefore did not have as many things seen as worth “saving” due to their social location and lack of access.

That said, as historical theory develops, more items are seen as valuable. As historians include more voices in the narrative, more items can be worth preserving. With the development of social, cultural, gender, another other lenses, items representing the common human have value, not just powerful elites or military items. However, this is a process. Academia is trickle down. Surely museums and other academic-like settings are at least a decade or more behind in historical theory. (I’d argue the public is still eons behind- the most popular selling history books often focus on powerful, elite male figures and/or the military.) It’s a process, but more items can be added to archives- diaries, children’s toys, personal items used by every day people.
Also, historians learn to read between the lines, so to speak. Just because no document spells out what women did in a certain society, reading other documents (through the lens of more recent historical theory) can reveal new information. For example, church records record births, deaths, marriages, etc. Seeing the pattern of women having babies mere months after marriage shows women were having pre-marital sex, despite official doctrine. Diaries or correspondence can reveal how policy/world events affected people on a daily level. Even in reading the same documents examined over centuries can reveal new things, for example Joanne Freeman’s careful cultural historical lens reveals how the concept of honor was woven in the lives of early politicians. With the development of new theory, archives can begin to value other items, and old documents can shine in new lights.

However, these advancements aren’t without limitations. Space, of course, is one, as is focus. Boxes of medals from the Civil War might be great, but a local archive may not have the space or need for such items. (And women’s auxiliary medals reveal hands-on roles some women took during the war!) Monetary investment might also pose a problem- some archives lack resources or human power to preserve or catalog some collections, like 2000 silverfish-worked-over photos. That said, many items, potentially full of historical value are out there- in closets, Goodwills, antique shops, or private collections, just waiting to be discovered or passed on. Collectors often have very sentimental attachments to each of their items, making it hard for them to part with pieces or either chunks of their collection.

Some archives may be digitized- when items can be. Obviously artifacts can only be photographed (possibly). But this also requires lots of human power. Even in my university’s small-ish archive has thousands and thousands of items, far too many to be digitized at once, even by a full-time staff. Also, this requires a huge upgrade in servers, processors, back up storage- lots of space and financial investments that many archives cannot afford. Let me also remind you that museums are conservative places in their nature (museums are not places the general public would like to see their national myths and master narrative questioned) and usually, so are the people working them. It’s a slow moving entity, and even the common use of modern computer technology is not to be taken for granted.

That said, I wonder if archives/museums/universities want to keep some of their archives a mystery? That said, even if an entire archive was digitized, that does not mean each item would be searchable (needs a good finding aid, at least!). It’s an interesting topic to watch, as far as archives go, tying in with the democratization of history and knowledge as well as new historical theory.