Like others of you in your blogs I was struck with the reading today: "Historians tell stories." I see each of you busily trying to figure out the "traces" that have been left behind about your house. The house history project asks you to find out a lot of minutia but the hope is that at the end some stories will emerge. And then even beyond that our collective house histories will start to suggest a number of stories about the neighborhood! So what stories can we tell about the neighborhood? Without a storyline all of the facts we are uncovering have no meaning. I can see interesting things emerging. Look at Rafael's blog - he found out that the house used to be a "tin shop" so what does that say about businesses in the neighborhood and how that has shifted over time. Rachel also talked about the furniture shop. Rafael also uncovered some scrapes with the law - could you actually figure out how much police action has taken place in the neighborhood over time and find a story in that? What about the "cultural landscapes" around your houses? What else is in the neighborhood near to your house? Nearby History asks us to sharpen our perceptions - can we learn to "see" and "listen" through these odd traces of the past in the landscape and in the archives?
I am excited to go to the museum today and meet our partners for this project! Among the documents that the book points out as potential sources be sure to learn what the newspaper sources are for Goshen and whether they are indexed or not!!! What kind of government documents might be helpful to you? Most of the "ephemera" that the Elkhart County Historical Museum has collected is in the vertical files so be sure to see what they have there. They have a much more complete set of city directories than does the Goshen Public Library and these are really fun to look at because you can look at all the houses in the block and make some comparisons of your house to others (p. 78). And of course the plat maps are always interesting, I wonder if there are any for these city blocks? Many of you have already tried you hand at the Sandborn maps - don't give up too soon. The census will probably be one of our best sources for thinking about the neighborhood as a whole entity and looking at change over time. Who wants to dig into that for the final project?
It is fun to be part of a class where, even as a professor, I don't know what the outcome will be of our research! Happy hunting.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Thinking about Final Projects
When I think about what kind of final projects we might do in this class - whether Documentation, Exhibit, Digital, or a Performance - I am starting to see some emerging ideas for telling the story.
1. A project on the overpass - which houses it will affect and how it will affect the neighborhood. I have an email address for someone in the neighborhood who gave me the maps. What is the neighborhood doing about it? Are they concerned? Would they like to stop it?
2. A project around deterioration of the houses and why - is it because there are so many rental houses in the neighborhood and the landlords don't want to restore the houses because it costs too much? Are there a few landlords that own a lot of the houses? Would they respond to neighborhood pressure to fix them up? Could you find out who the landlords are and even talk to them about historic preservation? What about the privately owned houses? Is there any "gentrification" going on in the neighborhood? Why did the wealthy leave in the first place and when? When were they broken up into rental properties? One could talk to LaCasa about the restoration work they are doing with home owners in this neighborhood and others and how they interpret the deterioration.
3. A project around the Latino population of the neighborhood. Could you find out in the census what percentage of the neighborhood are people with Latino surnames? Are they clustered in certain areas of the neighborhood or is it all mixed? Do they tend to rent or buy their homes? When did that transition happen? How has this changed the neighborhood? Are they able to pressure the landlords at all for repairs? How does their legal status affect this?
Those are just some of the things that I am curious about and I think would make nice projects for the class, each of which would be helped by the collective house histories that we are doing.
1. A project on the overpass - which houses it will affect and how it will affect the neighborhood. I have an email address for someone in the neighborhood who gave me the maps. What is the neighborhood doing about it? Are they concerned? Would they like to stop it?
2. A project around deterioration of the houses and why - is it because there are so many rental houses in the neighborhood and the landlords don't want to restore the houses because it costs too much? Are there a few landlords that own a lot of the houses? Would they respond to neighborhood pressure to fix them up? Could you find out who the landlords are and even talk to them about historic preservation? What about the privately owned houses? Is there any "gentrification" going on in the neighborhood? Why did the wealthy leave in the first place and when? When were they broken up into rental properties? One could talk to LaCasa about the restoration work they are doing with home owners in this neighborhood and others and how they interpret the deterioration.
3. A project around the Latino population of the neighborhood. Could you find out in the census what percentage of the neighborhood are people with Latino surnames? Are they clustered in certain areas of the neighborhood or is it all mixed? Do they tend to rent or buy their homes? When did that transition happen? How has this changed the neighborhood? Are they able to pressure the landlords at all for repairs? How does their legal status affect this?
Those are just some of the things that I am curious about and I think would make nice projects for the class, each of which would be helped by the collective house histories that we are doing.
Some Notes from Ervin Beck's Talk
Ervin Beck, Professor Emeritus from Goshen College's English Department, came to talk to the class on Tuesday. I was struck with a number of things from his talk:
1. He has been doing Public History all his life, is involved with the local historical society, has published in the field and is currently involved in setting up and exhibit.... yet he says he is not sure what Public History is and whether previous History Departments at Goshen College would have approved of it. This reminds me of our talk in class about the tensions between Public and Academic historians.
2. He said that he is more interested in the beauty of the architecture in doing historic preservation than in the sociology of the neighborhood. That is an interesting comment on all of the different ways that people can approach the same work from different perspectives. He is unhappy when he sees so many houses in the neighborhood falling into disrepair.
3. He said that Goshen got a designation on the National Register of Historic Districts in 1981. The work was essentially done by one women and probably could not be pulled off in the same way today since there is so much more paperwork and the criteria are much stricter. Goshen has one of the largest Historic Districts in the state. It includes both commercial and residential areas and is perhaps too big to really take care of and restore. But it does mean that there is some protection for many houses in Goshen if people apply for the federal money. However unless it is federal money being used to destroy the house there is no federal protection if a private owner wants to tear it down. There are no local laws that would protect houses on the historic register expect now for the downtown commercial district of two blocks.
4. Showing us photographs of houses in the East Lincoln Crossroads Neighborhood was a good introduction to architectural styles! Who knew that most of them were Queen Ann style! I would guess that our houses further back into the neighborhood might not be Queen Ann but we will see.
1. He has been doing Public History all his life, is involved with the local historical society, has published in the field and is currently involved in setting up and exhibit.... yet he says he is not sure what Public History is and whether previous History Departments at Goshen College would have approved of it. This reminds me of our talk in class about the tensions between Public and Academic historians.
2. He said that he is more interested in the beauty of the architecture in doing historic preservation than in the sociology of the neighborhood. That is an interesting comment on all of the different ways that people can approach the same work from different perspectives. He is unhappy when he sees so many houses in the neighborhood falling into disrepair.
3. He said that Goshen got a designation on the National Register of Historic Districts in 1981. The work was essentially done by one women and probably could not be pulled off in the same way today since there is so much more paperwork and the criteria are much stricter. Goshen has one of the largest Historic Districts in the state. It includes both commercial and residential areas and is perhaps too big to really take care of and restore. But it does mean that there is some protection for many houses in Goshen if people apply for the federal money. However unless it is federal money being used to destroy the house there is no federal protection if a private owner wants to tear it down. There are no local laws that would protect houses on the historic register expect now for the downtown commercial district of two blocks.
4. Showing us photographs of houses in the East Lincoln Crossroads Neighborhood was a good introduction to architectural styles! Who knew that most of them were Queen Ann style! I would guess that our houses further back into the neighborhood might not be Queen Ann but we will see.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
After the Neighborhood Walk...
After walking around the neighborhood and reading the class blogs I am interested in how we can use our class projects to answer some of those questions you posed.
What is the logic of how to choose the houses for the house histories in order to get at the different questions that we might be interested in? Do we want larger coverage or concentrated on a few blocks? Do we want only older houses, larger houses, more architecturally interesting, or a range of all? What is the criteria for choosing? Wouldn't this depend on what we wanted to find out about the neighborhood?
What do we make of the reasons for decline that you noticed in the neighborhood? How would you find that out? Is deterioration of houses any indication of whether people feel connected to their neighbors and to the neighborhood?
How do we judge whether there is a sense of a neighborhood here? Can we see any signs of that by walking through or do we have to use other kinds of sources? Did the city just set these boundaries or did people have some input? What was their criteria for deciding where the boundaries went?
What is the logic of how to choose the houses for the house histories in order to get at the different questions that we might be interested in? Do we want larger coverage or concentrated on a few blocks? Do we want only older houses, larger houses, more architecturally interesting, or a range of all? What is the criteria for choosing? Wouldn't this depend on what we wanted to find out about the neighborhood?
What do we make of the reasons for decline that you noticed in the neighborhood? How would you find that out? Is deterioration of houses any indication of whether people feel connected to their neighbors and to the neighborhood?
How do we judge whether there is a sense of a neighborhood here? Can we see any signs of that by walking through or do we have to use other kinds of sources? Did the city just set these boundaries or did people have some input? What was their criteria for deciding where the boundaries went?
Monday, January 13, 2014
Some questions I would like to discuss in class:
1. Why did animosity develop between historians and other people doing history in other ways? What are its consequences for the profession and how can that be repaired? Why did academic historians decide to recognize public historians?
2. What is a good working definition of Public History and why has it come to mean that? What are its characteristic features? For that matter what is the definition of the historical profession? In what ways is academic and public history the same or different?
3. In what way does the audience determine how we do history?
4. So is professionalization a bad thing for the field of history? What would the alternatives have been? Is history different from other professions in being open to the amateur?
5. What kind of history does the public need? Is it less objective than academic history? Is it "real" history?
6. Are High School teachers Public Historians?
7. What kind of service to society do public historians provide? Do you agree that academic historians "abdicated their civic responsibility"?
8. What is the "identity crisis" in the field of history and do you think it has been solved?
9. How should public historians be trained? Differently than academic historians?
10. What role do professional associations, journals and conferences play in the field of Public History?
11. What is the significance of the "Public History Movement"?
12. What is the future for historians and history?
1. Why did animosity develop between historians and other people doing history in other ways? What are its consequences for the profession and how can that be repaired? Why did academic historians decide to recognize public historians?
2. What is a good working definition of Public History and why has it come to mean that? What are its characteristic features? For that matter what is the definition of the historical profession? In what ways is academic and public history the same or different?
3. In what way does the audience determine how we do history?
4. So is professionalization a bad thing for the field of history? What would the alternatives have been? Is history different from other professions in being open to the amateur?
5. What kind of history does the public need? Is it less objective than academic history? Is it "real" history?
6. Are High School teachers Public Historians?
7. What kind of service to society do public historians provide? Do you agree that academic historians "abdicated their civic responsibility"?
8. What is the "identity crisis" in the field of history and do you think it has been solved?
9. How should public historians be trained? Differently than academic historians?
10. What role do professional associations, journals and conferences play in the field of Public History?
11. What is the significance of the "Public History Movement"?
12. What is the future for historians and history?
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Open the Blogs!
1.
Public History Notebook – Google Blogger
You will each have a Google Blogger site linked to this one where you will post your responses to and applications of the reading and web
explorations for each day. A
blog entry will integrate the critical learning in your class preparation for the neighborhood history projects we are doing for the class, you own potential future in Public History and your reflections on the questions listed in on moodle for the day.You will also be required to respond to your classmates blogs and begin a conversation about what you are learning together.
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