Overall, what stood out from these talks was the need for recent graduates to expand their scope of what it means to be an historian. As most are well aware, tenure track positions are no longer as viable, but what must be made even clearer are that the opportunities that do exist should not be conceived as some sort of consolation prize. It was said that historians need to begin to think about where they fit in outside of the university and know that it is not simply enough to say that field is “public history,” if the expectation is that “public history” means a position in a museum. Budget cuts and a glut of applicants may mean that these opportunities are limited as well. Instead, historians need to begin to conceive as to how their skills and knowledge may fit into any other number of areas, including (but certainly not limited to) government, non-government organizations, journalism, and consulting.

While the AHA may have focused on the lack of opportunities in traditional areas of employment, the AHA also spent a significant portion of this year’s proceedings devoted to the opportunities available in the field of digital history.

As an emerging field, digital history remains hard to define, and many willingly admit to knowing little about the subfield. Writing of his experience at the AHA THATcamp on digital humanities, Jonathan Rees wrote in his blog More or Less Bunk:

The folks in Digital Humanities aren’t exactly sure what precisely it is that their subfield does and willingly admit it. My quick intro suggests to me that there are interesting DH [digital humanities] projects that involve putting stuff up on the web (sometimes to do new things with it that you wouldn’t get to see otherwise and sometimes so that more people can do the same kind of things with the same data); new digital tools being developed to do new things; and new digital tools to do the same thing everyone else already does, but better.

Rees wrote his comments not as a critique, but as an honest observation of the evolving nature of the field. He goes on to describe that as a professor it is these new tools, used in conjunction with the traditional tools and teaching the traditional skills of the humanities, that excite him as a teacher.

While the AHA certainly did not solve the problem of underemployment, it is at least refreshing to see the organization’s members voice their concerns and begin to discuss solutions, both for the issue of employment, but also in how this may alter teaching and career advice provided to students in the field. In addition, it is also hopeful to see the embrace of new technologies that will surely come to define the field. Again, the issue of digital humanities focused not only the tools themselves, but how best to use these tools in the classroom and how to teach the students who will be the architects of these tools in the future.

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The vastness and variety of the collections of the British Museum speaks to more than just the objects themselves. These artifacts speak to how we as humans have evolved, survived, worshipped, expressed love and made war. A simple mortar and pestle tells of how we shaped the agricultural revolution and used food as a means of communion, while ancient but beautiful sculptures of people, gods, and animals show the very human impulse to create art not only for the sake of beauty, but in an earnest attempt to try to understand our environment and experiences.

For me, among the highlights of the British Museum is the Enlightenment Room which is an eclectic mix of books and objects that speaks to the obsession with collecting that characterized the life of Hans Sloane, the British physician whose library and cabinet of curiosities formed the basis for the British Museum. The obsession with collecting, coupled with the power balance of colonialism, helped in part to create the extensive collections of the British Museum. As you inspect the mummies you can almost picture a late 19th century expedition to excavate these objects and bring them to Britain. It wasn’t until later in the 20th century that laws were passed that prevented many of these types of practices.

Of course, what this has resulted in now are issues of ownership over many of these antiquities. There are questions of who exactly these objects belong to, and where it is that they should be housed. The debate is a common one in the museum world and in many ways the British museum has handled it deftly, discussing the debate in great detail in a number of its exhibits where it is most relevant, for example, in its presentation of The Elgin Marbles.

Issues of repatriation are complicated, and by no means can generalizations be made. The types of objects and their sources are all factors to consider, as are the circumstances under which they were came to be where they now reside. There are also questions regarding the potential benefits or pitfalls if these objects were to be returned.

In an episode entitled, “Mummy of Hornedjitef” from the BBC podcast, A History of the World in 100 Objects, which explores one hundred key artifacts from the collections of the British Museum, Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif was asked about how she felt about seeing Egyptian mummies on display in a museum so far from their original home. Soueif replies that, “Ultimately, it’s probably no bad thing to have Egyptians obelisks, stones and statues sprinkled all over the world, it reminds us of ages of colonialism , yes, but it also reminds the world of our common heritage.” As Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, describes it, the objects are a means to tell the history of the world as “one shared story,” or as Soueif says, “an ongoing joint project, where one lot of people picked up where another had left off.” Undoubtedly, this theme of a common humanity speaks to the visitor of the British Museum as they are able to experience (for free) a concentrated collection of objects from different places and eras in one setting. In addition, the museum provides a center for scholarly research in the fields of history, anthropology and archeology, among others.

For those wishing to explore the artifacts of the British Museum, or issues of repatriation in more detail, I would highly recommend the BBC podcast series, A History of the World in 100 Objects, or its accompanying book, just recently published. Historians, writers, and other persons of note provide insight into the artifacts and their potential meanings in understanding the evolution of humans and their culture, while several episodes also deal with issues of repatriation that affect museums today. The podcast can be accessed for free online or through iTunes, and the book is widely available.

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The potential and the challenges of this project are immense. The RF has been a philanthropic organization involved in almost every aspect of 20th century history, including (but not limited to), urbanization, public health, university development, arts and humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The daunting task is to create an over-arching narrative that tells this story, in all its facets, and to do so through the immense holdings of documentation and visual materials held at the RAC.

As the digital humanities continue to evolve, a project such as this confronts many interesting questions that are to be solved among historians, archivists, and web designers. To me, one of the most interesting issues is that of the “curated experience”. While on one hand, a web exhibition offers opportunities for creating new content and making large amounts of archival material available, the fact remains that a web audience is still subject to an experience that has been curated by historians, archivists and any other individuals involved in the creation of the site.

In choosing the documents and images for digitization, historians are essentially acting as curators, creating an experience in much the same way they would for a physical museum exhibition in which a story is told through particular objects that have been chosen from a wider collection. For a research institution such as the RAC, this is a challenging responsibility. Online audiences, including researchers, do not see full document collections that are comparable to the ones that they might request with an on-site visit. A key question becomes how to choose the best documents for digitization, knowing that not every document will be digitized and not every story can be told. How best to serve the research community, while also providing an entertaining and informative website for a more general online audience?

Archivists also play an integral part in curating the digital humanities. In tagging each digital image of a document or photograph, archivists are shaping the experience of the online researcher. Tagging determines the essential keywords to locating materials, thus determining what a researcher might find online, and the ways in which they might find it. In some cases, tagging may also determine what subjects a researcher might continue to pursue. No archivist will ever be able to fully determine what a researcher may want from a document, so in that sense, tagging is always incomplete; however, it is not for the archivist to interpret documents for researchers.

As more institutions move towards creating digital libraries and exhibitions for online access, there are many questions to be considered by those creating the product. With digitization, the humanities are in a period of reinvention. The field is evolving, still learning how to present information and dealing with issues of accessibility and design. The digital humanities is challenging the role of the scholar, affecting how we write, teach and think about material. The challenge is for the scholar to communicate with a larger, more diversified audience than they may have reached in traditional academic writings or university classrooms. An online presence forces creators to think visually as well as critically. This may mean utilizing tools such as GIS mapping or creating timelines as a tool for understanding.

While digitization undoubtedly offers access to archival material to a wider audience, there will always remain a need for on-site facilities for serious researchers to comb through entire collections in search of particular documents, as well as the surprises found along the way. Going through archival collections provides a narrative that targeted digital research cannot, and it also allows for the visceral experience of interacting with documents. Furthermore, talking with archivists who know their collections well presents research opportunities that simply cannot be replicated by online access. In talking with researchers, archivists see the immediate connections between researcher topics and queries and the collections that they maintain, and they are then able to pass this information on immediately.

While digital resources will never replicate the give and take involved in these scenarios, it remains in the interest of historians to involve more people in the humanities by utilizing digital tools. We may not look to entirely replicate the archival or museum experience, but we may be able provide new experiences, ones that can only be had through digitization, and that’s an exciting possibility.

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First off is:

Anne Frank House – The Secret Annex Online has been nominated for two awards, including best Cultural Institution, and best Visual Design – Function. The website is an interactive exploration of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The site uses 3D imagery to take the user on a tour of the secret annex, while also providing context through narrated videos that use excerpts from the Anne Frank diary, as well as other holdings at the Anne Frank House. This site serves as an example to others designing online exhibitions for cultural institutions, in particular, smaller institutions.

Second:

Letters of Note – Warning: Addictive! Letters of Note is a blog devoted to publishing one letter, postcard, telegram or memorandum a day. While the premise may be simple, the site is a unique compilation of information, covering both the historical and the pop cultural. Run by Shaun Usher, the site publishes a digital image of a letter along with a transcription. The notes are fascinating, heartfelt, funny and odd, running the gamut of authors that include Mark Twain, Yoko Ono, Theodore Roosevelt and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, as well as unknown and ordinary people. An amazing find for anyone who understands that joy of coming across a great letter in an archive, or that sense of glee in reading a note originally intended for someone else’s eyes.

Next:

Historypin – Featured previously on ActiveHistory, this site not only has created a photographic archive, but has also partnered with Google Map to geographically locate each photograph. The photos are also given further context through user generated content that provides a description of the photo, or a related back-story.

Also:

PBS.org – Most of us know PBS for its documentaries, but its online component also provides useful information related to its historical programming, including further background information and timelines of events. Personally, I have found the site to be an excellent teacher resource when using PBS documentaries in class. PBS.org has been nominated in the field for Charitable Organizations/Non Profit.

And Then:

Smithsonian Institution – A website that one could easily wile away the hours on, but also an extremely helpful site for researchers, and a fine example for major museums involved in digitizing collections and improving online accessibility. Smithsonian Institution provides basic information to visitors, but also allows online visitors and researchers to fully explore collections and exhibitions.

Finally:

A History of the World – Nominated in the field of Radio/Podcasts, BBC’s A History of the World uses 100 objects from the British Museum and other UK institutions to tell a history of the world and human development. In each 15 minute episode, an expert lends insight into an object and describes its relevance to human history. In addition to the podcasts, the website also includes photographs of the objects used in the series and a map detailing where each object was discovered. A fascinating series and a benchmark public history project. The series has now ended, but each episode remains available for free downloading.

Activehistory

The book in question is Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, and the reason that I chose to write this review is that having recently read this book, I can’t seem to shake it from my consciousness. Beautiful, imaginative, inspiring, whimsical, enlightening, are just some of the words that spring to mind when trying to describe this book. In short, this book rejuvenated my love of storytelling, while also challenging me to pursue my own discipline in new ways.

Written and created by Lauren Redniss, Radioactive is part visual art, part history, part biography, part science. The book tells the story of the life and loves of Marie Curie, both in her personal and professional life. While a biography of Curie, the book is also a history of the fields of physics and chemistry, including the Curies’ discovery of both radium and polonium. Redniss explores some of the key personalities and scientific breakthroughs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the impact that a select group of scientists and their discoveries would have throughout the 20th century. The book celebrates science and research, while simultaneously contrasting key moments in the early years of physics and chemistry against the later realities of the A-Bomb, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Redniss draws on maps, photographs, archival documentation and drawings to produce a vivid and colourful story that skips through eras, while never losing its footing in Curie’s life. To simply write about this book does not do justice, as the book itself attacks your senses and challenges the heart and mind through its various mediums.

While Redniss is not a trained historian, it is clear she knows how to conduct historical research, as the book expertly and ingeniously uses oral histories and archival documentation in novel ways. These sources range from an interview with a witness and survivor of Hiroshima, to FBI file records on a Manhattan Project scientist. What is clear throughout this beautifully worked patchwork of sources is that Redniss cares about her subject. Her portrayal of Curie is even-handed and honest, but Redniss’ art and her writing style also reveal a deep affinity for her subject. As a historian, this book has inspired me by showing me just what is possible in my own field. Redniss has presented new and ingenious ways of making history accessible to a wider audience. Those of us engaged in the task of writing, whether professionally or as a hobby, know what it is like to read the book you wish you had written. It is a rare thing, maybe inducing a little bit of envy, but more so admiration. For me, Radioactive is one of those books.

An exhibition on the making of Radioactive is on display at the main branch of The New York Public Library until 11 April 2011. An accompanying website has also been created in conjunction with The New York Public Library and Parsons the New School for Design.

http://rockarch.org/workshops/arnova-rac2011/arnova-rac2011.doc

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My own views on this story are mixed, and perhaps the reason why I write this post, to gauge the reactions of others to this particular case. On the one hand, I wonder about what seems like an attempt to whitewash history and to pretend as if this type of language was never a normal part of American life. By neglecting to use the original works in the classroom, or by using this new version of the text, are educators missing the opportunity to delve into the realities of American history and into the state of race relations, both past and present in the United States? Furthermore, are students being robbed of the opportunity to be offended by language in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain was a keen observer, as well as critic of American life, and he was ahead of his time in exposing some of the hypocrisies in American race relations. In forming a meaningful friendship with the slave Jim, the character Huck is forced to confront some of the lessons that he has learned in his own short life, and to question that values that he was brought up with. Huck, in his journey down the river, comes to recognize the humanity of Jim and is forced to grapple with a number of moral issues, including the contradiction between his newfound realizations and his old language.

On the opposite side of the issue, I am also sympathetic to Gribben’s reasoning. Gribben is simply looking for way to make Twain a bigger part of American English curriculums, and to expose more children to the writing of Mark Twain – surely not a bad goal in and of itself. By omitting a small number of words Gribben may be able to do this. The ultimate hope is that once exposed to Twain some children will become hooked and go on, in later years, to read the original versions as Twain himself wrote them.

On the Publishers Weekly online comments section to this story the debate on this issue has been fierce, with the majority of commentators opposed to the editorial changes for both reasons of literary purism and a perceived whitewash of history. The full story, as published by Publishers Weekly, is available at Publishersweekly.com, and a portion of the author’s introduction and explanatory note as it will appear in the revised version is available for view at the NewSouth Books website, www.newsouthbooks.com. Decide for yourself what you think on this issue.

But this is not a post about cinnamon toast. What this post is about is cherished memories, small rituals and our own personal histories that should be shared with those around us. We all have these small experiences with people close to us, or larger moments filled with intense happiness, comfort, fear or sadness, moments that make indelible impressions upon us. Together, the big and small are compiled and they form our personal stories.

This notion that everyone’s stories are important is shared by Storycorps. For those of you not yet familiar with Storycorps, I strongly encourage you to check it out. Storycorps is a non-profit that is committed to the preservation of stories of all Americans. Since 2003, the organization has been recording, archiving and sharing the stories of over 60,000 participants. As the Storycorps website notes, “The heart of Storycorps is the conversations between two people who are important to each other: a son asking his mother about her childhood, an immigrant telling his friend about coming to America, or a couple reminiscing on their 50th wedding anniversary.” The stories are shared online through the Storycorps website and podcasts, and through animated vignettes, which are especially poignant, and have admittedly caused me to weep openly on more than one occasion. All of the stories collected in the project are preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. This is a vast and impressive oral history project devoted to telling the story of all Americans. Storycorps has several permanent locations as well as a mobile unit that travels throughout the country. For those in Canada, I would say that Storycorps offers not only a fine example of what is possible with oral history, but also provides inspiration for everyone to record their own interviews with the important people in our lives; there is perhaps no better time for this than the approaching holiday season which provides many of us with the opportunity to go home and reconnect with our families.

I myself will be returning to Canada this holiday season, and I plan to bring along a voice recorder, small camera and my technically capable boyfriend. Armed with these, my intention is to record talks with my parents. I want to talk to my mom about raising my siblings and I, the songs she sang to us and the rituals we had. I want to ask my dad about growing up in Italy and leaving it when he was 20 years old. These are questions that I’ve long wondered about, but for some reason never asked. In my mind this is not a one time project, but something that I plan to add a little to each time that I can. For those who may not know where to begin, Storycorps also provides a do it yourself guide that gives tips on compiling oral histories, including information on technology, possible questions, and perhaps most importantly, tips on listening.

Perhaps the most moving act of commemoration in my mind was the Tribute in Light. For the ninth year in a row two massive beams of blue light, (the largest ever projected from Earth to sky), were shone into the night sky in the place where the twin towers once stood. The project, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, is a silent but powerful symbol that can be seen across the city. While I was aware that the project would be taking place, by the time night fell I had forgotten about the installation until I looked out of the back window of my apartment at 11:30 pm only to be reminded and moved by the image that I was confronted with that was coming from across the river. This simple yet powerful memorial caused me to do what the very best memorials should do; it caused me to pause and to think. My mind wandered over the past nine years as I marvelled at both how much and how little has changed since 2001. In many ways, I couldn’t believe that nine years had passed since the event, the ‘where were you when’ event of my generation. In many ways it felt like so little has changed since that day. While I believe that the events of 9/11 had a profound impact on many individual lives, and for some, brought on personal life changes, for most of us in the United States and Canada life has changed very little. We carry on with our day to day lives, dealing with a little more security checks, but for the most part unfazed. Many of us carry on woefully unaware of the problems of warfare and scarcity that plague so many parts of the world, or how our own government’s policies affect others around the globe. But the fact is that much has changed. Since 9/11 there are two on-going wars that we as private citizens know very little about and do very little to acknowledge. We let the others do the fighting, and we ask very little questions. Our society has also fundamentally changed its discourse. Our world had come to be defined as pre and post 9/11, and these distinctions are clear in our media dialogue that we all live with and have adapted to. We have grown accustomed to news of terror alerts and terror cells, and we hardly flinch anymore when Islam-a-phobic rhetoric is given equal weight in the debate. If these two beams of light only serve to make us remember those who died then that is enough. But if they also serve to make us reflect on how our world has changed, and give us cause to pause and ask questions of the world we inhabit now, nine years later, then they have also enlightened.

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After checking out Historypin I did some research and came to realize that the ideas and technology behind Historypin have been used in a number of other formats and websites that are again, cool and worth checking out. A Flickr group entitled Looking into the Past may have been the catalyst for many of these ideas. The open group has over 3400 members that have created images within images, often by simply holding up an old photograph against its current location. The website has images from around the world and a discussion board posting announcements regarding this particular style of photography. Also worth checking out is Museum of London: Streetmuseum. Launched this past spring, this free iphone application was created by the Museum of London in London, England as a way to let Londoners, tourists and curious iphone users to interact with the history of that great city. The application combines both the fine art and photograph collection of the Museum of London with the technology of Google maps so that any user can walk the streets of London while the past come alive on an iphone screen. The application is perfect for tourists who want to have their own personal walking tour, or I imagine a nice way to pass the time while waiting for a late friend on a London street corner. Rather than fuming about their bad manners, why not investigate how that particular corner looked back in the 1800s. Finally, it is definitely worth checking out the work of Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov. By using Photoshop to literally fuse together the present with the past, Larenkov has created a haunting series of photographs that document the siege of Leningrad and other events of the Second World War. Beginning with the sites in the original wartime photo taken across Eastern Europe, Larenkov returned to the locations and shot the places at the exact same angle in order to superimpose the original and new photos together. The results are ghostly and moving.

Editors note: For another blog post on website connecting historical photos with maps see Space and Historical Imagery.

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