Course Overview
In recent decades, historians who attempt to reach the wider public have had to contend with national museum controversies, commercial projects such as the History Channel, and the rise of the Internet. This course will introduce students to the theoretical and practical issues confronting public historians today. Readings will address questions of audience and authority in collecting and presenting history; the relationship between history and national, communal, and personal memory; the politics of public history; and the production and dissemination of history in diverse formats and media. These critical, methodological, and theoretical readings will provide the basis for the hands-on section of the course in which students will develop proposals for a public history project--a museum exhibit, an oral history, or a website.
Assessment
Successful completion of the course depends, most basically, on regular attendance in class, evidence of preparation and application, active participation in class discussions based on close readings of the required texts, and completion of all exercises and assignments on time.
1. Class participation. Includes one in-class presentation on required readings and ongoing active engagement with course concepts and discussions. - 15%
2. Movie Review. 3 pages. Due Feb. 7 - 20%
3. Exhibit Review. 3 pages. Due Mar. 7 - 20%
4. Website Review. 3 pages. Due Mar. 28 - 20%
5. Final Paper. 5 pages. Due Apr. 11 - 25%
Policies and Procedures
Attendance: More than two unexcused absences will affect your final grade. Make sure to let me know in advance if you cannot make it to class.
Deadlines: I will not accept late work without a very good reason (e.g. a signed note from your doctor). The only exception is if you have made a prior arrangement with me for an extended deadline.
Grading: I will grade assignments according to the Department of History grading norms, available at http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/history/Department_Grading_Norms.html. Please read these guidelines carefully.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is an affront to me and to your peers. Plagiarism is submitting work that is not your own as if it were yours. This includes copying material, even a few sentences, from published or unpublished sources, from the internet, or from another student without citing the source. It also includes presenting another person's ideas or paraphrasing the work of another person without citing the source. Plagiarism also includes handing in bought papers, papers obtained from free essay websites, or having another person write your paper for you. Anyone suspected of copying other people's work without clear acknowledgement, or of any comparable act, will be reported to the Faculty of Arts and Science for plagiarism.
Syllabus: I reserve the right to make changes to the syllabus during the year if/as necessary. Please check the online syllabus before every class.
Learning disabilities: I am very supportive of students with learning disabilities. However, I cannot help you unless I know about it in advance. If you have a learning disability, please tell me as soon as possible. If you only suspect you may have a learning disability, have yourself assessed now. I cannot help students who only tell me they have a learning disability after they have done poorly in the course.
Required texts: For each class, you will read an article or chapter available online and will closely examine several online resources.
Schedule
Jan. 10 Course Introduction
Jan. 12 Whose History? The Beginning download slides
Read: Carl Becker, "Everyman His Own Historian," American Historical Review 37 (January 1932): 221-236.
Visit and Evaluate: The Presence of the Past Questionnaire at http://chnm.gmu.edu/survey/question.html
Jan. 17 Whose History? Cultures and Nations download slides
Read: John Kuo Wei Tchen, "Back to the Basics: Who Is Researching and Interpreting for Whom?" Journal of American History 81 (December 1994): 1004-1010.
Visit and Evaluate: Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America
Visit and Evaluate: A More Perfect Union
Jan. 19 History and Film: TV Documentary and Official Culture download slides
Read: Graham Carr, "Rules of Engagement: Public History and the Drama of Legitimation," Canadian Historical Review 86 (June 2005), 317-354.
Visit and Evaluate: The Price of Freedom
Visit and Evaluate: Ken Burns at PBS
Jan. 24 History and Film: Documentary Filmmakers as Historians
Read: Seth Fein, Review of The Fog of War, American Historical Review 109 (October 2004), 1260-1261.
Read: Benjamin T. Harrison, Review of The Fog of War, Journal of American History 92 (December 2005), 1115.
Visit and Evaluate: Prelinger Archives
Presenters: Warren Hill and Danielle Hamel
Jan. 26 Guest public historian: Ron Rudin
Jan. 31 History and Film: Historical Feature Film download slides (includes questions for film review)
Read: Robert Rosenstone, "The Reel Joan of Arc: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of the Historical Film," Public Historian 25 (Summer 2003): 61-77.
View: Film Maurice Richard (not playing in local theaters any more, so don't worry if you haven't seen it)
Presenters: Florence Panne and Jonathan Mongeau
Feb. 2 Exhibiting History: The Politics of Collecting and Display
Read: Svetlana Alpers, "Museum as a Way of Seeing," in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
Read: Carole Emberton, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War," Journal of American History 92 (June 2005), 163-166.
Visit and Evaluate: The Price of Freedom
Presenters: Jason Quinn, Chris Kim, Gabriela Pelc, and Matthew Maxham
Feb. 7 Exhibiting History: Public Controversies
Read: Mike Wallace, "The Battle of the Enola Gay," republished in Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).
Visit and Evaluate: Enola Gay: Former Exhibition, National Air and Space Museum
Presenters: Stephen Penney
Movie Review Due
Feb. 9 Exhibiting History: Memory and Popular Culture
Read: Alison Landsberg, "America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Memory," New German Critique 71 (Spring/Summer 1997): 63-86.
Visit and Evaluate: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Presenters: Courtney Boosamra and Kathleen Newton
Feb. 14 Oral History: Community
Read: Michael Frisch, "Oral History and the Presentation of Class Consciousness: The New York Times vs. The Buffalo Unemployed," in A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
Presenters: Hin Cheong (Tommy) Leung
Feb. 16 Oral History: Memory
Read: Bruce Jackson, "The Perfect Informant," Journal of American Folklore 103 (1990), 400-16.
Visit and Evaluate: Studs Terkel: Conversations with America
Presenters: Chloe Walker
Feb. 21-23 Winter Break - No Classes
Feb. 28 Oral History: Empathy and Ethics
Read: Kathleen M. Blee, "Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan," Journal of American History 80 (1993), 596-606.
Presenters: Allison Smith
Mar. 2 Digital History: Storytelling and Databases
Read: Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (2001), 14-26, 213-228..
Presenters: Vanessa Bergamin, Dawn Green, and Tania Costa
Mar. 7 Digital History: Exhibits websites discussed in class
Read: B. Johnson, "Place-based Storytelling Tools: A New Look at Monticello," Proceedings of Annual Museums and the Web Conference (2005)
Read: Janet Horowitz Murray, "From Additive to Expressive Form," in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press, 1997).
Presenters: Louis Longo
Exhibit Review Due
Mar. 9 Digital History: Scholarship websites discussed in class
Read: Tara McPherson, "What Color Is Your Scholarship?" Flow (December 2005)
Read: Will Thomas and Edward Ayers, "The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities," American Historical Review 108 (December 2003).
Presenters: Franco Capone, and Samuel Yu
Mar. 14 Official History: Historical Discipline and the Public materials discussed in class
Read: Moshik Temkin, "'Avec un certain malaise': The Paxtonian Trauma, in France, 1873-74," Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 2 (April 2003), 291-306.
Presenters: Marc-Philippe St-Jean
Mar. 16 Official History: Political Regimes and Historical Revisionism
Read: James, Beverly. "Fencing in the Past: Budapest's Statue Park Museum," Media, Culture and Society 21 (1999).
Optional: "7 Myths about the Challenger Shuttle Disaster," MSNBC (January 27, 2006).
Presenters: Kyle Kraayeveld and Jeff Hayward
Mar. 21 Official History: Genocide and Human Rights
Read: Annie E. Coombes, "Robben Island: Site of Memory/Site of Nation," in History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), 54-115.
Presenters: Omar Chnouki, Jesse Rafael Turnbull, and Ian Blok
Mar. 23 Preserving History: Monuments and Historic Sites
Read: Scott A. Sandage, "A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993).
Presenters: Virginia Hudson and Elaina Della Porta
Mar. 28 Preserving History: Archives
Read: Roy Rosenzweig, "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era," American Historical Review (June 2003).
Presenters: Alex Hrycyk and Katie Burke
Website Review Due
Mar. 30 Preserving History: Lay Communities
Read: Tony Horwitz, Chapter 1, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), 3-17.
Optional: Ludmilla Jordanova, "Public History," in History in Practice (London: Hodder Arnold, 2000), 141-171.
Presenters: Vincent Yu, Andrea Bessette, and Henrike Pit
Apr. 4 What Is to Be Done? "Novel History"
Read: James Goodman, "For the Love of Stories," Reviews in American History 26 (March 1998), 255-74.
Presenters: Kathleen Doyle, Melanie Couture
Apr. 6 What Is to Be Done? Activist History
Read: Michael Riordan, "Keep Asking Questions!" An Unauthorized Biography of the World: Oral History on the Front Lines (Toronto Between the Lines, 2004), 267-293.
Presenters: Sameera Qureshi and Joanna Sheppard
Apr. 11 What Is to Be Done? Beyond National Histories
Richard White, "The Nationalization of Nature," Journal of American History 86 (December 1999), 976-986.
Presenters: Francesco Scalia
Final Paper Due