Month: April 2011

Hey guys! I attempted to publish the app last week and hit a snag. For the itouchs (or mac products) it required a purchase of $99 membership to Xcode for publication the app store. I have not attempted to publish yet on the android side to see if there is charge. Xcode is free on Mac computers but will only allow for a simulation of the app, not publication without the purchase of membership fee. Sorry for the inconvenience.

My thoughts about this week’s readings are not particularly clear. My initial gut reaction to each article was disbelief and disgust about the racism and the acceptance of and belief in poor scholarship. These ideas have strong followings and footholds. Swaying opinions or changing minds about them does not seem likely to occur. Thankfully, there are people who catch what is happening and call attention to it. Even then, it didn’t seem as if there were too many willing to step forward and apologize or take steps to right the wrongs. Lots of excuses. I’ve kept going back to think about words from the “They Have Blood on Their Hands” post and responses. Chauncey DeVega wrote back to someone called Thrasher agreeing about questioning how much valuable energy we expend on racists , “or should we fight our fight on different terrain?”

The letter to the curator of Baron Von Munchaussen Historic Home reminds me of the entertainmentality of a historical location. Prior to reading the curator’s response I questioned how would displaying the facts versus the “this coined the phrase” impact the guest attendance to the historic home? Although I was not fond of her response I can understand the difficulty in teaching this concept to younger children. These excuses, however, should not stand in the way. We discussed in Dr. Gill’s Race, Class, and Ethnicity class last fall how do we deal with topic of race? It is very difficult to teach the younger generation about the separation in race and class that exists today because we teach them at a young age this happened in the Civil War and 1960’s and we fixed it. Smoothing out the hard edges of history places makes it difficult, in my opinion, to defend the historian’s argument “we must know about history to move forward with our future.” If we teach that law resolved all the issues of the past how can we possibly continue to write law? But then again how do you teach the younger generation when their required text books with misleading information tainted by an extremely bias group? Or your parents take you to workshop educating you on the founding fathers having the answers to all current day issues. (which fascinates me that “states rights” states find founding fathers, who have no idea on the current state of the local affairs, would be so inspired to correct their states flaws!) It appears to me that when it comes to the teaching accurate information you must teach research concepts. Teach the public to ask questions, to be skeptical of all you hear. This may sound pessimistic, but I think questioning leads to the research. Curiosity will lead a person to find what they want to hear and they may stumble across contradictions. In an attempt to save the guest list of a historical location without offending your patrons try to encourage questions. Do not merely ask “are there any questions” but seed the questions, offer websites, or apps to give them a jump start. Teach the public to not be spoon fed history, but find out for themselves. This may be fair compromise while keeping the ethics of historian intact.

The readings this week were eye-opening to say the least. I thought that Larry Cebula’s letter to the Baron Von Munchausen House curators was interesting, as was the response from the curator. I thought that the question Cebula posed to his blog readers at the beginning of the post was something we should all think about, and I hadn’t truly thought about it before. “What is the obligation of a public historian when the history you are presented at a historic site is not right?” I think that Cebula handled it in the best way possible, and I am glad that I read this so I can keep it in the my mind. The curator’s response was certainly disheartening. Should we scrub history of negativity to give our children a more positive outlook on the world? Of course not. It is a shame that there are public historians who feel that we should. I am sure that in many cases this happens because tour guides or historians find that their lives are made easier by avoiding negative subject matter, which is a shame. However, in this instance, it seems the curator was acting out of their own beliefs. This is where the subject of ethics in public history becomes so interesting. If you were to ask the BVM Historic Home curator if she was being “unethical,” I’m sure she would answer, “Of course not!” Especially since her position seemed to be that professors bring negativism into the 21st century, and push students into “hate” mode.

Similar arguments could be made for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Earl Taylor. Would I say that they are being unethical? Yes, absolutely. But, assuming they truly believe what they are teaching their audiences, followers and students, they would certainly disagree. I think that the case of Joy Masoff, the textbook author, is quite different as one could arguably see a point at which she crossed a line: Using non-scholarly works in her research.

Here we go with another one of Kate’s semi-facetious, sometimes-off-topic-but-always-makes-her-way-back-around post! Hazzah!
With an opener like that, I must first comment on the phrase that was crossed out in the Respectable Negroes blog (can I say that?). “willfully ill-informed Right-wing neo-secessionist nostalgia mongers”; I must admit, I get quite the kick out of that. I would also like to comment on their mention of white-washing history. So apparent when it gets called out, but when you are learning things in school, you trust your teachers and what the educate you on–uh oh! All of a sudden you have a completely biased view of history! Whoopsie daisy!
A good example of an event such as this is the Virginia text book. The fact that the book went through so many people to be approved, then the same people disagree is frustrating; not to mention that the author had 14 more books in schools! The author of “Yikes! History’s Grossest Moments”; who said herself that she was “a fairly repected writer.” Hmmmm
And finally, the letters between the professor and the museum curator, which I have just adored since last semester. The references the curator makes to the african american students and learning about “their own kind” is just fascinating! Oh, and I absolutely loved how education in the North was higher as apposed (yes, with and ‘a’) to the South. I could have asked for nothing better!
That is my rant. I am allowing myself to say these things because I was once a victim of bad history. I’d rather not talk about it……

=)

I have to start by saying that I have no coherent response to these situations we read about. This week I heard about the fourth grade teacher who had a “slave auction” in her classroom where white kids “bought” and “sold” the black ones. Mmmmm, really? Now, if I was going to “teach a lesson” about discrimination I might set up an “imaginary” reenactment, but say, based on the color of your eyes, or perhaps the color of your mother’s hair–things that are not rational, that might affect the child regardless of their helplessness to change it, and the fiction that these things represent. But that’s just me. These situations where you have such charged emotional responses get to be a lot for a girl like me to handle.

So, speaking of ethics.
For the last few days we have been dealing with the use of images in our project. Namely, what is the legal status, and who do we contact if we must? What about images that are in books? Most of them luckily, are located at the local archives (some of them are not free unfortunately), but what about the other images? We’re working all of these issues out at the moment, but we’re finding that it does take a little effort.

Also, I posted the Reinventing Boise Atlas last week. It is the project for MAHR student Johnny Hester. His work is really helpful for our project, he has published a number of maps that illustrate geographical and infrastructural change in Boise at the turn of the twentieth century, but for me, there is a question of how much can or should be used? For this project I was wondering, should I just use some of his images, and cite Mr. Hester, or would it be better to incorporate a link to his digital history into our project? I have never met him, but I will have to contact him to ask his opinion on the matter. I’m also going to see if he has any tips for us on our search.

My reaction to the “They Have Blood on Their Hands” article is mixed. While the author’s assertion that there are racist overtones to the Sons of the Confederacy secession celebrations seems well founded, subjugating the tea party movement under the same banner is overly simplifying a very complex phenomenon. It seems to promulgate the myth of the importance cultural constructions of race, class and gender to people’s actions and political commitments, while ignoring religious and political value systems which may be as, or even more important. The article about the 4th grade textbook seems to illuminate a dilemma historians have yet to deal with adequately. What is the role of truth in history (if truth is a part of history)? Post-modern influenced might reject the assertion that historians can find truth. Even if we can, however, how and why is historical truth important and is this because truth itself has some inherent moral significance or is it due to its pragmatic value in influencing decision making and furthering positive policy outcomes? The pragmatic role of historical truth seems to be most in tune with a democratic society. The third article brings up the important question of whether–and if so, how–public history should be policed. While academic historians have largely pragmatic reason’s for policing themselves, I don’t think this is as prevalent among public historians and institutions. I’m not sure what should or can be done about this. The last article was possibly my favorite due to my own historical interest. The tendency to canonize the founding fathers is far from a recent invention of the tea party. Methodist in the 1840s baptized republicanism and the founders by asserting that the Reformation was the source of American freedom. This was not completely a naive acceptance of America’s political system since the separation of church and state did allow for the phenomenal increase of both the Methodist and Baptist denominations.