This week’s readings:
The readings for this week all circled around one main theme: the importance of collaboration and engagement.
All of this week's readings centered around one main issue, the importance of engaging the public audience and collaborating with them. Recording Oral History emphasized the collaborative effort between interviewers and narrators in preserving individual, local and community histories. The Presence of the Past also emphasized the public audience and the needed collaboration between historical professionals, public historians and their audiences. And the article What is Public History? focused on the belief that history is a collaborative effort, a “joint endeavor” between the public and historians. The article quoted Corbett and Miller who emphasized in their own article, A Shared Inquiry into a Shared Inquiry, the importance of shared authority and collaborative efforts as well. Rosenzweig, Thelen, Corbett and Miller highlighted how important it is for the audiences to be actively engaged with history as well as their past, and how essential it is for historians to be actively engaged with the public.
Analysis– The Presence of the Past:
The Presence of the Past does an excellent job of emphasizing America’s connection and engagement with the past. And yet, on the other hand Rosenzweig and Thelen focus on America’s connection with their own personal and family past as opposed to their connection with American history. The survey discussed in the book is said to have shattered the belief that the American people are ignorant of their history by portraying that the Americans they interviewed showed great interest and engagement in their personal past. However, it is important to decipher between one’s interest in their own personal history and one’s knowledge of their community’s history, and more especially of their nation’s history.
The book clearly established that contrary to popular belief Americans constantly engage with the past through family reunions and gatherings, holidays, photographs, videos, journals and diaries. And in their opinion it was this interest and engagement with the past that contradicted the previously held belief that Americans had become disconnected from their own history. And yet in my opinion one’s personal past and enthusiasm in one’s personal history is separate from one’s interest and understanding of national, community, or local history.
The main issue with this project was their choice of terminology. In conducting the survey the interviewers used the term “past,” noting that asking about one’s “history” elicited a less than enthusiastic response. For this reason the interviews highlighted the narrators personal pasts as opposed to their community, local, or even national histories. Using such terminology as past and heritage conjured up the response of the familial past, not responses of American history. There is a major difference between engaging with one’s past as opposed to engaging with one’s national past.
3 comments:
I agree with your opinion that interest in one's personal history does not equate with one's interest in their local and national history, however, what I gathered from the readings is that it is this disparity between these seemingly conflicting interests of the public that public historians need to resolve. If the public could see how their familial past relates to, at the very least, their community's past then the public could gain that lacking interest in their local and national history that public historians are trying to instill.
Kristen makes a good point when she stated that people connect to their own personal experiences and histories have the ability to identify with the larger picture of Public History. She also stated that people’s interest in their own personal history does not equate with what their interest will be in their local and national history. I had not read all the reading before posting my first blog but for what I have read since seems to point to disparity between the interests of the public and the history being presented by public historians that needs to resolved. In order to be successful in my opinion the public historian should find ways to present history to the public to help people relate to their family’s past. In doing so this should show how their family history relates to that of the community. If Public Historians help the public gain interest in their local and national history it will lead to a better understanding of Public History the debate on how to instill the interest in the public will be difficult be everyone in the public’s interest in different which explains why this debate is still on going.
The more I think about your distinction between using the words "past" and "history," I have to say that I agree with you. "History" to me suggests more of a collective subject such as that of a nation or group and also makes me think more of classes I took in high school. A "past" seems to envoke a more personal reaction in me that involves people, places, and events I have knowledge of and am comfortable with, i.e. my heritage. Rosenzweig and Thelen may have influenced their study by choosing past over history although if interviewers had asked my about my history, I would have thought it was a strange way of asking about my past. It would be interesting if they were to redo the survey and use history in their questions rather than past and see whether their results were the same.
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