This week our readings centered around the current research and reviews of prominent public history organizations, and where public history is evolving towards. As we have discussed in class, one of our major concerns we have is how our audiences value the history that we hope to interpret in public history settings, and how we can produce better history for our audiences. In Imperiled Promise a report on the state of history in the National Park Service, was facilitated by the research of four prominent historians, Anne Mitchell Whisnat, Marla R. Miller, Gary B. Nash, and David Thelen. They focused their study of the NPS sites on how historians are doing history, and who exactly in and for NPS (5). This study also provided an understanding of some of the issues that many sites face, such as lack of funding, and disconnections between natural and cultural resources from historical interpretations. This NPS report concludes that there needs to be reevaluation of site resources and interpretations, that can better include previously unused resources within their interpretations. There is also a call for better understandings of funding not only through NPS and OAH, but also through grant work and other avenues of funding which can greatly assist with dwindling monetary assistance that many sites are facing.
In the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance's 2014 portfolio, we are given an insight into the many challenges that non-profit cultural institutions are facing, and we again see that lack of funding and the Economic Crisis which the nation faced in previous years has contributed to this issue. However many of the institutions that have faced cuts in funding, are slowly bouncing back and rebuilding their resources. There is also emphasis on the fact that despite these funding issues, many of the cultural institutions have been able to maintain a constant flow of programs and exhibits for the public.
What seems to be a very common theme and emphasis between both reports is the challenges that public history and cultural institutions are facing primarily from a lack of or cutting down of funding. However each report states that institutions and site need to be conscious of this, and become savvy and organized in their approaches to maintain appropriate funding. Although we as public historians strive to produce good history for our audience, we also need to recognize the challenges of funding and resources that can affect the history we hope to produce.

    This week we read Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines by Amy M. Tyson. Tyson’s book centers around Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, a living history museum, and in particular how the interpreters viewed their roles within the museum. Like our reading from last week, Tyson creates an ethnography of the Fort Snelling environment, and its interpreters. Throughout her time at Fort Snelling, and the many interviews she had with its interpreters, Tyson discovers that the large majority of workers are torn between their true love of their work with the public and pressures from inside and outside of the job that can make it daunting. One major issue that many of the interpreters who were interviewed felt, was a sense of unimportance from their upper management. For instance, during the creation of the MHS Interpreter’s Caucus, which was an organization of the seasonal interpreters that fought for certain causes like medical leave, were unable to disassociate their employer's belief that these were only temporary workers, not professionals (Tyson 84). As Tyson points out throughout a large portion of this book, that many of the interpreters employed at Fort Snelling saw them selves and were indeed professionals within the field of interpretation, but were disheartened by lack of recognition from their employers and others outside of the interpreter’s sphere. Another major point of stress that many interpreter’s felt was emotional depletion from both their interactions with patrons to the museum, as well as from interactions with their fellow interpreters. For instance, many interpreters  found stress from the social stigma of being an interpreter, as well as the stress of having to in a sense split their personalities between one or more historical characters. Although these pressures not only cause emotional and physical toll on these workers, they all for the most part found their time with the public rewarding and strove towards bettering their public service (114-115).
    One large issue that I noticed throughout Tyson’s The Wages of History, was a large disconnect between the employer and the importance of their seasonally employed interpreters. Unfortunately, it seemed that despite certain efforts interpreters did not feel appreciated by their employers professionally or intellectually, which ultimately effected the ways that interpreters viewed their own work and their own value within the museum. What The Wages of History  lends us as public historians is insight into how we can better interact and communicate with those within our own sphere. In relation to our semester project, we can also better understand our own actions with not only the narraters with have worked with, but those who are hoping to continue this project.

The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, by Cathy Stanton presents the ways that the Lowell National Historic Park (NHP) interprets its local history. Stanton recounts three interpretive plans that Lowell NHP uses to interpret its local history. What seems to be a common trend within Lowell’s interpretive plans is a linear telling of its history, as well as a lack of connecting past historical trends with the present (Stanton). For instance, in Lowell NHP’s Run of the Mill tour, Stanton observed that the interpretive plan that many park rangers followed, revolved around a linear history that traces the history of the town’s industrial development beginning in the 1820s (45). What was emphasized within the tours that Stanton observed was a telling of this history with the inevitable conclusion that working conditions have greatly changed for the better of the laborers within the town, and the town itself. However, Stanton makes it clear that the working conditions that were endured by mill girls and Irish immigrants during the nineteenth century in Lowell are in many ways still endured by textile workers in the present at Lowell and else where. This disconnect between the present and the past within the Lowell NHP’s park rangers is a trend that Stanton traces throughout her observations of Lowell, and as she concludes can not “provide maps for actual participation in or conversation about the relationships of power and modes of production in the world we live in now,” (67).
    What The Lowell Experiment helps to provide us is with a better understanding of the effects of revitalization, and local agendas on the interpretations that are created at heritage sites. Although we have discussed many factors that can contribute to certain interpretations being created within public history settings, this weeks readings help to provide more insight into the dangers of highly selective cultural histories that are created to revitalize previously industrialized towns. In relation to our semester’s project, this reading provides us with more insight into how Mantua residents may wish to shape their own history. As a community that is actively working to improve their town, the citizens may be influenced to interpret a particular history that may unwittingly disconnect it from the present.

This week's readings included the article Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me:Reflections on the History Wars by Ken Yellis, and the book Private History in Public:Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life by Tammy S. Gordon. What both texts offered was a look at various museum exhibit techniques and settings. 

Yellis focused his article on two exhibits, the Mining Museum an exhibit focusing on previously unused historical objects, and the Mixed Blessings: The Complex Social Life of Cliff Swallows an exhibit on the nature of cliff swallows. What Yellis determines about both exhibits is the attempt by the curators and exhibit creators to produce an exhibit that will leave their audience touched about the topic. The exhibit Mining Museum did have many reactions from its audience ranging from rage at seeing a KKK mask in a baby carriage to overwhelming emotion of sadness (Yellis 337). Although the creators of this exhibit were able to produce reactions from their audience, Yellis notes that many found the exhibit distasteful or anger provoking (338). In contrast the exhibit on the nature of cliff swallows, while very realistic and raw, did not provoke any real emotion from their audiences. Yellis ponders whether this lack of emotion from the audience stems from a desensitization to the natural world through popular media (339-340). Unlike in the earlier exhibit which seemed to open up hereditary wounds from past historical events within our history. What this ultimately shows is the need for public historians to understand the limitations that they can push with their audiences. 

Gordon’s book Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life focuses more on the creation of exhibits within community and entrepreneurial settings. Although community and entrepreneurial exhibits are not as accurate within the academic setting, Gordon makes the argument that these exhibits are just as important to the understanding of local history and heritage, as exhibits created within larger institutions (Gordon). Unlike in Yellis’s article, Gordon spends more time in describing how community created exhibitions can effect both local audiences and audiences of outsiders in positive ways. 

This week’s reading give us food for thought about exhibits and the effects public historians hope to have on their audiences. Although we want to challenge common understandings of historical events and landmarks, we also need to be mindful about the adverse effects this may have on the reception of our exhibits. 

Homes, buildings, and many other forms of architecture are preserved to help reflect the history of certain places and people. In Urban Landscapes as Public History the author Dolores Hayden discusses the debate created between Herbert J. Gans and Ada Louise Huxtable over “the public meaning of the built past” (Hayden 4). What set these two apart in their understanding of the built past was their definition of what history they wished to use and who should be given funding for preservation. Gans felt that social history was very important, and that federal funding needed to be socially acceptable. However Huxtable wished to focus on cultural history and the preservation of great building was of more importance (Hayden 4). Despite their differences in what should be preserved and what history should be presented, they both understood that the local and neighborhood histories of many communities is being lost through the constant changes being done to American urban landscapes (Hayden 5). While this is true that the constant and radical changing of urban landscape can and has created blank narratives within local histories of cities, we know now that there are efforts that can be made to not only preserve these histories but also invoke memory in the public of these places. One such way to do that is by understanding and working with the many ways in which a person can remember or be provoked to remember the past.
    In Dolores Hayden’s chapter on Urban Landscapes as Public History, she says that “If Americans were to find their own social history preserved in the public landscape of their own neighborhoods and cities, then connection to the past may be very different,” (Hayden 46). This is a great observation to how public history is changing, but also how to make local histories and in the context of this article, urban histories more public and community oriented. One major aspect of tackling this, as Dolores Hayden points out, is through the use of memory, and in particular place memory to both preserve local landmark and historical memory (Hayden 46-47). Throughout this chapter there are shown a myriad of ways in which multiple disciplines can come together to help to create of public history work that can both inspire a community and remind that community of their wealth of history.
    In relation to our own project, Hayden’s work helps to present many new aspects to how we can present public history with the help of not only the community we will be working with, but also with potentials those of other disciplines. We can better understand the memory that can be invoked not only through oral histories, but how place can be greatly effective is memory and history.

Citations

Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place (First MIT Press 1997)

    In Michael Frisch’s introduction to A Shared Authority, the author argues that historians need to understand the authorship of oral histories, and if these oral histories are in fact real history (Frisch xx). The idea that we need to really understand whether the histories that we record are in fact true, is an interesting thought for our class as we continue with our oral history project for the semester. Oral history can be thought of in a very general and broad sense as recording another person’s memory of a particular historical event, or person, but it also needs the historian who is collecting these histories to perform some form of research to support the recordings. While this seems pretty straight forward, the collecting of history and essential collecting background information to support it, there are some issues that can be met when a project like this is completed.
     In Leon Fink’s article When Community Comes Home to Roost : The Southern Milltown as Lost Cause reflects on some of the issues faced when history is completely controlled by a group intent on interpreting the local history for their own gains. Fink’s article focuses on his experiences with the Cooleemee Historical Association (CHA), and their community history and heritage projects (Fink 125). One of the main issues that I saw, was the ability of the group was its ability to silence certain aspects of their town’s history that could be deemed as unpleasant or unflattering. For instance Fink states that what was most disturbing about the historical interpretations of the CHA “was the bending and shaping of discreet memories to fit a tidy, group portrait,” (Fink 125). Thus showing that the true history of the town, and the memories of those who lived in it were being shaped to create a new history that did not involve anything outside of the happy, hard working history of mill workers. I understand that with town history projects there is a strive to show the best parts of a town’s history, but to completely change and distort the historical truth can create more bad than good. By ignoring certain aspects of a town’s history in hopes of creating a story that can sell to visitors, the majority within the community can allow for the quieting or ignoring of certain minority groups or important historical events. There is also a chance that those leading these community revitalization projects are pushing their own agenda’s that can adversely affect those within the community. Fink saw this with the involvement of Lynn and Jim Rumley, who not became top members of the CHA, but also became very active members within local government through this organization (120).
    What both Fisch and Fink have given us is a better understanding of what issues historians can face when becoming part of public history projects that reflect upon a close knit community’s history. As we continue with out project we have to be mindful of not only the political issues that surround the community and its members, as well as who’s history it is that we are recording.

Citations

Fink, Leon. "When Community Comes Home to Roost: The Southern Milltown as a Lost Cause" Journal of Social History (Autumn 2009)

Frisch, Michael, A Shared Authority, (1990 State University of New York Press, Albany) 

 As a budding public historian one of my main concerns is how can I create a learning experience that will engage wider audiences. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life by Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, helps to bring information on this “wider audience” that historians wish to connect with.. As Thelen and Rosenzweig note in their introduction that they along with their colleges felt that, “professional historians were painfully unaware of how people outside of their own circles understood and used the past,” 1. Their study came from the issues historians face in connecting with a wider audience. Out of this realization the authors were able to spear head a study of if and how the “wider audience” viewed, interpreted, and connected with history. The authors interviewed a wide range of Americans from various areas of the country, and from many different backgrounds. A large majority of those interviewed by Rosenweig and Thelen seemed to gravitate towards historical learning due to personal reasons. Many individuals interviewed had personal or familial connections to certain events or points in American history, and some wanted to better understand their ancestral past in hope to better understand their own identity. This was extremely interesting because it helps to understand that many people with in America seek history that is relatable to themselves, or that can provide them with a sense of themselves or their families2. I believe that the authors were able to accomplish their goal of helping to bridge the gap between professional historians and their audiences, but I feel that this is a study that could be expanded on to include younger audiences. This study focused primarily on adult Americans, and while they are a large part of the audiences that frequent public history settings, they are but a part of that audience.
Pennsylvania in Public Memory by Carolyn Kitch, focuses on Pennsylvania’s industrial history, and public heritage programs. However, much like in The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, there is the theme of audiences and creators of public history settings having extreme emotional connections to the past that they wish to become involved with.  What I found quite interesting in Kitch’s investigation of the various public history sites throughout Pennsylvania was that the majority of the history being interpreted was based upon emotional connections made between those of the present to the past. Many of the employees and volunteers of the various heritage sites in Pennsylvania explained why they worked within this historical sites and settings. Many of people interviewed explained to Kitch that their reasoning came from family, and personal memory.3 Again we see that emotional connection plays a role in the way history is research and interpreted by those outside of the world of the "professional historian". By understanding these emotional connections that the audiences and employees of heritage sites have with history can we attempt to bridge to gap between these two groups.




1. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, Popular Uses of History in American Life (Columbia University Press,1998) 1.
2.Rosenweig and Thelen
3. Kitch, Carolyn, Pennsylvania in Public Memory (Penn State University Press) 18