From House to Neighborhood History

As the house histories begin to come in they allow us to begin comparing the information that we have been finding. What can we now begin to say or question about the larger neighborhood?

Do the house histories allow us to begin establishing a chronology of the neighborhood? 

1.      When was the neighborhood established?

2.      What happened during the depression? Other early dates with impact?

3.      When did people start to rent out single family apartments?

4.      When were the houses broken into apartments?

5.      Who are the landlords? What stake did they have in the neighborhood?

6.      When did the apartments start to be owned by companies?

7.      When did the wealthy people start to leave the neighborhood?

8.      How did people’s jobs change over time? Where do they work?

9.      When did Latinos start coming to the neighborhood?

10.  What is the ethnic composition of the neighborhood?  Change over time?

11.  Why do houses deteriorate? What are the factors that lead to that?

12.  What is the history of homelessness in the neighborhood?

13.  What is the history of crime and violence in the neighborhood?

14.  What businesses, churches, libraries, other public spaces are in the neighborhood? Change over time?

15.  Are there any famous people in the neighborhood? Who?Famous buildings - Carnegie Library

16.  Why should anyone care about this history of this neighborhood? Who is it interesting to? Are there larger histories that it intersects with?

17.  Have any of the houses been restored? By whom?

18.  Is there anyone who has a long history in the neighborhood that could be interviewed? Who are those people? How would we find out? What would we ask them?

19.  Are there any stereotypes of this neighborhood in Goshen? In the schools?

20.  Are there any new trends in the neighborhood? Signs of gentrification? Work of LaCasa?

Digital Libraries

It seems like the digital world is one place where academic historians and public historians are finally coming together. I am running into digital projects more and more in both my teaching and research. Over the past three years or more I have been working to construct my own digital library to make my research in the Mara Region of Tanzania accessible to people there. It is going to be migrated but at least for now here is the link: Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library 
This has been a entailed a huge learning curve for me and is still far from complete. At least it gives me some idea of the amount of work from all kinds of experts that goes into creating a site like this. But digital technology does open up the possibility of repatriating cultural material back to the region where it came from in a way that was not even imaginable when I did this work in 1995-6.

I am now teaching a class called The History of Ethnic Conflict in which I am finding a wide range of digital sources very helpful. We are studying the Israel/Palestine conflict through a book about Palestinian memory of 1948. It is amazing how many digital archives have grown up around this memory work:

•al-Nakba: the Palestinian “Catastrophe”

•Nakba Archive

•#Nakba Survivor

•Israeli Occupation Archive

•1948 Lest we Forget

•Nakba Film Works

•Jewish Voice for Peace 

•Palestinian Village Histories, R. Davis

–Archive for Birzeit University

•Berzeit University Palestine Archive

–Destroyed Palestinian villages

•The Palestinian Poster Project Archive 

I especially like this last one - an amazing collection of posters, both Palestinian and Israeli.

It is amazing where this field has gone in the last decade and it seems like both Public and Academic Historians should get on the bandwagon or be left in the dust! 

 

What makes a good museum?

We have been looking at and reading about museums and thinking about what makes a good exhibit? What elements should we find in an exhibit. We had some good conversation in Bristol about the exhibits that are there now along with the director's critique. Here are some of the ideas that I walked away with:
1. Exhibits should bring the past and present together and lead to action
2. Exhibits should include the full diversity of the community in its exhibits.
3. Visitors should be able to relate their own experiences to what they see in the exhibit.
4. Exhibits should be about the particular local history and not just a generalized American past.
5. Visitors should be able to learn something new about their community not just reaffirm their assumptions
6. Exhibits should tell as story not just display stuff, the stuff should be interpreted and explained.
7. The interpretation should leave space for the visitor to decide what they think but also guide them
8. Exhibits should not be crowded and cluttered but leave space for the larger effect
9. Signs should be big enough to read and photos big enough to look at carefully.
10. Exhibits should be engaging, participatory, experiential and interactive, especially for children.
What else? What is on your top ten list? 

Then being introduced to Simone's Museum 2.0 Blog pulls some of these things together. In particular students noted the blogs on:
1. Participatory Design in Museums
2. Designing Participatory Questions
3. White Privilege in the Museum 
 So what would a participatory museum look like? How do we work at incorporating a wide range of community stories beyond those of white privilege? How do we get people involved when they come to the museum? What do they walk away with?

This is a conversation I hope we continue to have throughout the semester and especially with the final projects.

Professionalization

As I read the articles on Archives, Administration and Records Management I was thinking about the issue of professionalization. Is it a good thing for the field to be professionalized? Does that push out the amateurs? Should there be a place for amateurs? Why did the historical profession in the academic organizations abdicate their responsibility for advocating for professionalization of public history? Is that another example of "shooting yourself in the foot"? If it is important that the people who direct or museums, archives, historical sites etc are historians, and not just technicians, then we should advocate for this? What does training in history do for these administrators and records managers that could not be done by someone trained in public administration or management?