Monthly Archives: February 2016

Limitation and Division of Archives

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From the Carter reading on Silences, I was intrigued by the term “total archives” (216) in reference to Canada’s practice of documenting the historical development and all segments of a community by acquiring both official administrative records as well as related personal papers and corporate records (http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/t/total-archives). The practice emphasizes collecting a wide range of materials, including architectural drawings, maps, microfilm, and other documentary forms. (archivists.org) I wonder if in addition to make archives more inclusive and all encompassing, it is also important to note that archives are not neutral spaces without vested interests (Carter, 216) nor are they apolitical (Springer). Perhaps the format of the archive can reflect this political nature rather than only trying to work against it. Additionally, the concept of “total archives” is interesting because, as Carter states “the records in the archives tell a very small part of a much larger and infinitely complex story.” Therefore, not only do archives consciously exclude narratives, there are also narratives that will never be told because of the nature of archives not being able to tell the whole and complex story.

I am reminded of our discussion about differentiating “the past” with “history” and how these words carry with them different connotations. “The past” is assumed to be more personal and less factual perhaps whereas “history” carries with it an assumption of high accuracy and credibility, often based in what is available in archives. The concept of history as imagination reminded of a project I worked on in a high school history class comparing Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette to scholarly articles and books that we had read about Marie Antionette geared at an academic audience. The prompt was something like “Which of these two types of narratives gives a more accurate portrait of this historical figure. Choose one and defend it.” The purpose of the assignment was to examine our prejudices toward “higher” forms of history telling and to understand that neither very well evidenced histories nor fictionalized stories can tell a full version of a person.

I think this is relevant to working with the Bryn Mawr Archives because we are dealing with a collection of personal histories of people who have been connected to the college. Working with archival materials, there is only so much that you can gleam, because people don’t always say what they mean nor are they producing or saving items thinking that their materials will end up in an archive. I am reminded of the readings that we had about first students, particularly Linda Perkins’ The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880-1960. In the article, the letters that were used as evidence to support specific claims about opinions about African American Women, but often I felt it was difficult to believe certain understandings of the feelings of students given the evidence presented.

On a separate note, the formatting of the archival space intrigues me. In the example of the Collection Development Policy of the John J. Wilcox Archives of the William Way LGBT Community Center, some of the divisions in the formats of material seems hard to differentiate. For example, where is the division made between “Artwork” and “Artifacts and Objects” and why? What is the purpose of these divisions and are there archives organizing their material in other formats?

Archivists and “Preppers”

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The readings for this week, especially Kimberly Springer’s article on Radical Archives and the importance of current-day activist groups making sure their materials are preserved for the future, reminded me of an article I read on Buzzfeed about “preppers”, people who build their lives around being ready for a crisis that fundamentally transforms life as we currently know it.  The link to the article is here, in case anyone is interested, but I’ll summarize it as well:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/hunkering-down-with-the-survival-mom#.dfR04plAP

The article focuses on Lisa Bedford, the “Survival Mom”.  Lisa and her family live what might seem like an ordinary American suburban lifestyle, but Lisa has also stocked a bunker in her home with supplies for her family to survive for five years.  She also runs a website, “The Survival Mom”, which tells people things to do in their daily lives that will make them more ready for disaster.  In contrast to more militaristic and offense-oriented, mainly male, survivalists, Lisa’s survival strategies are distinctly more defensive, focused on keeping one’s family alive in the face of any kind of disaster.

On first glance, an article about preppers may seem to bear little relationship to all of the articles we read this week about archives, and I agree that there are many differences, but I’m more interested in exploring the similarities, and examining what a prepper philosophy might illuminate about archival work.  Springer’s article about radical archives struck me as different from the rest of the readings, and indeed the focus of many archives, because its emphasis is on preserving materials of the present for the future, as opposed to preserving materials of the past.  The collection policy for the LGBT Archives at William Way Community Center, for example, said that they don’t collect born-digital material with any regularity, which indicates to me that they are not yet focused on preserving LGBT-related materials from the present, many of which are digital.  In contrast, Springer focuses on suggestions for activist groups to take control over making sure their current digital materials are accessible in the future, even as technology rapidly changes and old file formats can no longer be opened.  I was especially struck by her recommendation that activists back up all of their files on three different hard drives stored in three different protected locations.  Although Springer is focused on the survival of records and movements, not of individual people, her concerns seem to overlap significantly with Lisa Bedford’s and other preppers’- we are too currently dependent upon the technology and conveniences of the present, and falsely act as if though they will be eternal.  Therefore, if we want to preserve something, whether it be ourselves or our movements, we need to prepare for when the world inevitably changes, be it through gradual technological progressions or a massive disaster.  Like Bedford, whose philosophy pushes up against an American way of life that fails to acknowledge its ephemerality, Springer’s archiving of the present pushes up against a view of archives that sees them as repositories of “history” or “the past”, a time mistakenly thought of as wholly separate from the present day.  On first read it seems silly, and even paranoid, to back up all files on three separate hard drives, or to prepare a bunker to sustain your family for five years- but when forced to reckon with the fleetingness of our current ways of existence, it starts to make perfect sense.

Reading about preppers, one of my main problems was that their philosophy assumes a certain amount of affluence.  While you don’t have to be rich to do what Lisa Bedford suggests on her Survival Mom blog, you do have to have enough disposable income to be able to stockpile extra supplies, and enough time to devote to setting up and maintaining a bunker.  The same criticisms, I think, can be leveled at Springer’s suggestions for preservation of activists movements’ materials.  While it is far less expensive, and less time consuming, to convert and back up an organization’s digital materials than it is to prepare an entire bunker, there is still an assumption that people involved in those movements have the time and resources to step back from their work, think about what is worth saving for the future, and take steps to preserve it.  Traditional archives are often built around the idea that the people who created the materials didn’t find them worth archiving- it’s people who come after, whose job it is to create archives of the past, that have the time and resources to do that preservation work.  I do think that Springer’s suggestions are important, and worth implementing if at all possible, but it’s also important to remember that sometimes it’s all a person, or a movement, can do just to exist in the moment.

Working in and outside the system

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After briefly attempting to stalk Rodney G.S. Carter on Google, I failed to find a picture of the man who wrote a very interesting article about silence in the archives. By stalking him I was trying to find out a little more about his identity. I’m sure for a lot of reasons it may not be important, but I was curious as to why his analysis of silence seemed to end at, “While we must extend the invitation to work with and include all groups, we much recognize that there are groups who code to work outside the archive. It is essential that archivists not undermine the right of groups to keep their own silence” (pg 233). And while I understand this argument and see its value, I wish there was a call for people in marginalized groups to join the archives, so that when there are gaps there is no question whether or not the archivist will do a good job of telling their story. They can fill the gaps themselves.

I say this about SGA, and I say it about most anything else; we need to work inside and outside the system. It’s great that some marginalized groups are creating their own system for archiving their history. But what happens when people are only looking at mainstream archives? If there is a gap in Bryn Mawr’s archives, I don’t want to see us complacent with just another archival method. I want to see us hire someone who will do the job and do it well. I think that means we need to get more people in the system, but also call for accountability from those in the system. I don’t think just “not knowing” or feeling like they just don’t have the “experience” is good enough anymore. There must be people out there who are willing to teach and help and contribute.

I don’t know who Rodney G.S. Carter is. From what he wrote I can only assume he’s writing from a place of privilege. So instead of him just saying that we should respect silences when they’re wanted, I wish he was also holding his hand out to help those who still need to get their foot in the door.

Making Archives Accessible

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As interesting as I found this week’s readings, the point that was really missing for me was one that I think public history continues to struggle with: how does one really make an archive “accessible”? It’s listed in Wilcox’s Collection Development Policy as part of the William Way LGBT Community Center’s goals: “to collect, describe, interpret, and provide access to publications…created by, dealing with, or of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals” (Wilcox 1, emphasis added). The Policy further mentions who uses the archives– the LGBT community, researchers, students, teachers, journalists, and more– but offers nothing in the way of numbers or explanation of how one might come across these archives in the first place.

Perhaps it seemed that this was beyond the scope of the pamphlet, but I don’t think it should be. If we take for granted (for the moment) the general message many of our readings in the last weeks have suggested to us– that history isn’t very “hip” or “cool” at the moment as an academic discipline, and that people like doing history best when it’s not actually called history— that implies that maybe archives are not at the top of people’s lists of places to visit (well, okay, except for maybe genealogists?). Part of the problem with our archives– with any archive, really– is that there’s so much stuff that you can’t really ever put it all on display at once, particularly when you’re dealing mostly with paper documents. On some level, then, you can’t make archives come to people–people have to come to them. Or do they?

Digitization, for example, is making it less and less necessary to visit physical archives. I personally would prefer to visit physical archives and work with the actual documents, though, and I think this is where the article about Smith comes in handy. Young’s analysis of Smith’s archives points out that people go to their archives (like they do ours) when they have class assignments (Young 63). That’s a start, at least– leading the horse to water, if you will– but I wonder how you might get past that and expose these pasts to an even larger audience. It seems that people would be interested in the contents of some of these archives– if only we had a way to bring them in and makes archives accessible enough that you might visit them without having an assignment in hand. I would have liked to see more suggestions about how that might be accomplished in these articles.

The Erasure of History and the Eerie Face of Smith

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Composita of Smith 1886

Composita of Smith 1886

“In the winter of 1885/1886 a group of Smith College women created a tangible symbol of their college friendship.  The forty-nine members of the senior class had their individual photographs taken.  The negatives from these images were then merged at a local photography studio to create a single composite portrait of the class.  Given her own identity/name “Composita”, the Class of 1886 carried the image of this woman and “classmate” with them throughout their long and rich history, until the final member of the Class died in 1964.  What is the story of Composita, and how does this single act of creating an individual identity from many tell us about friendship within the Class?”

“Composita of Smith.” Smith College Archives. 2011. Accessed February 04, 2016. https://smitharchives.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/composita-of-smith/.

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Carter writes in Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence*, “Identity is extremely important for every group, particularly, the marginalized who feel the need to assert a strong identity in the face of the power structures that attempt to stamp them out.” Nothing to me screams this better than Composita. In our Educate a Girl? You Might as Well Attempt to Educate a Cat! reading, Young talked briefly about the photograph that the students of 1886 created and gave an identify to. I thought this was immediately captivating, and sought after the image. I found it on the Smith Digital Archives (citation above, with clickable link provided). The young woman above is the creation of the combined faces of the senior class of 1886. I find this photograph, and the idea behind it, very powerful because students have created this fictional character that combines physical aspects of each of them, as well as combining their emotional aspects, into this unifying figure that they can all connect to and rally around.

Women, especially women who sought after an education during this time period, were continuously fighting agains the odds to advance themselves. By creating a fictional character that they all were a part of, they were creating a history for themselves, and for their cause. With the erasure of women in significant archival spaces, I found that the 1886 class had a made a important, yet silent, message, as the author from the online archive writes, “By taking their composite photograph and imbuing that image with a collective personality, by keeping Composita “alive,” the memories of the Class remained viable and their experiences at Smith validated.” They didn’t use words per say to get their ‘voices heard’, but rather, they used silence- silence in the form of an eerie photograph, standing for unity and a desire for higher education of women.

Selling History and Our Place in It

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An important focus to understand the concern for “outsider” history is the framework of “what sells.” As noted by Filene, history is thriving in popular culture, whether on television, movies, or books. History sells whether the personal histories in the example of StoryCorps or generalized and glossy history like in the Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. People seem to be interested in history, but more importantly they are willing to spend money to feel connected to a history. In our discussions this idea of a marketable history also came up. Our discussions touched on points about what makes Bryn Mawr marketable as a college for students to apply and for alums and outsiders to give money to the college. Either way, it is important for the college to make sure it tells a history that people want to consume, just like museums are attempting to do also. As stated by Filene, the success of a museum is measured through public support (23). In reading this article and the Trouillot chapters, I was reminded of the many museums of Jewish history that I’ve visited in the U.S. and in Europe. These are a rather recent occurrence in public history. For example, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia was opened in 1976, the Jewish Museum Berlin was opened in 2001, the Museum of Jewish Heritage was opened in New York City in 1997. Often in Jewish history museums, family stories or family rituals are what are on display. As outlined by Filene with the Tenement Museum example especially, museums that incorporate a family history or a community history are popular because these are the stories that are more relatable to the general public. It is of increasing importance as the field of public history moves toward professionalization to not ignore the “simple” act of storytelling. As we move forward in our discussions I hope we do not move too far from the valuable personal and community narratives that the public often responds well to.

The piece of Trouillot that stuck out to me in relation to our project was the idea of the inherent ambivalence of the word “history.” We are both the actors and the narrators of our shared history (2), in this case the history of Bryn Mawr College. This creates a potential struggle, as we are both living and reflection on the history we are creating. Additionally, Bryn Mawr more than most places I have experienced, feels much more like it has a “legacy of the past” that does not come from anything that the past bequeathed itself (17). With our many “traditions” and “historically” specific way of doing things, it is difficult to get into what actually happened versus what we believe to be our past and therefore incorporate into our personal identities as members of the community. Bryn Mawr’s history and most likely the histories of many colleges are prime examples of what Trouillot describes as histories that have been produced outside of academia (21).

Creating History (People believe what they want to believe)

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Trouillot’s book and Filene’s article crystallized many of the ideas that have been in the back of my mind this year. Many of the concepts introduced and explained in the book are similar to the ones that we discussed in Exploring History (the required seminar for history majors).  In the first class, Professor Kurimay had us brainstorm and discuss the differences between social memory and history and if history as an academic discipline should be categorized as part of the humanities or as a social science (or both).  She pushed us to define both categories and in doing so, I realized how much stock I placed in the idea of ‘proof’ and how it related to producing professional history.  I had always believed that the answers were in the archives and that enough research or enough thoughtful interpretation would allow us to expand the historical narrative to include the histories of marginalized groups.  After this year, I now believe that my previous faith in the archive and in professional historians was misplaced.  Instinctively I think I understood Trouillot’s point, “When reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs.  They devise formulas to repress the unthinkable and to bring it back within the realm of accepted discourse” (Trouillot 72).  Or as my grandmother would say, “People believe what they want to believe.”  This leads me to ask: How then do we produce history that challenges, changes and engages our audiences when we understand how imperfect our sources and methods are and with the understanding that our work has been and will be interpreted through many biases?

How (and why) do we portray our histories?

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Something I was thinking about when we did our first exercise on the board was the idea of “conserving” a certain image of Bryn Mawr to appease conservative white fathers. Or perhaps we uphold a certain image of Bryn Mawr so alums will still give money. I could see how some people see that as being shady or dishonest. But as somebody who works in the Admissions office, I have a very different view of “withholding” information.

When I give tours, I have to paint an honest, but still pretty, picture of Bryn Mawr. My job is to sell the school, because we want a lot of students to apply. So sometimes when catastrophe strikes Bryn Mawr (i.e. Somebody puts up a confederate flag and the entire campus is talking about it) I don’t bring it up. Or if it does come up, I talk about how the community works together to solve the problem and save the day. Which is sometimes an exaggeration but most of the time is rooted in truth. From my experience there are always conversations, formal and informal, about campus events that give me hope and help me heal.

Which may not be accurate for some students. So am I justified for “lying” or editing the truth? I want more students of color and other underrepresented students on this campus. And I doubt I’ll get that if I go around saying how racist and oppressive everything is. I know from when I was a prospective student that I would have run in the other direction if I knew that students were putting up confederate flags. So I question if it is in our best interest to portray the cold hard truth always and everywhere. I worry when I see articles about Bryn Mawr that are meant to shame the institution that do not also end with a positive note of students and administrators coming together to make things right, we’ll get what we exude. So if we want more students who will come to Bryn Mawr who will   make campus a better place, is it in our best interest to make it seem like nobody cares?

This reminds me of Filene’s thoughts on “outsiders.” I see administrators and tour guides as the “professionals,” because they are the ones providing the official image of Bryn Mawr, while students who give outside interviews that end up in articles as the outsiders. What should we compromise and what can we learn from each other?

 

“Is Bryn Mawr defined by the two people who put up the confederate flag or by the hundreds of people who responded in outrage?”- Sofi Chavez

Silencing the Past to Amplify It

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This afternoon, I visited Eastern State Penitentiary as a part of my Praxis Independent Study “Art and Incarceration”.  The purpose of my visit was to look at the art exhibits installed there, which are one way in which Eastern State seeks to promote dialogue and reflection about incarceration today.  However, I kept coming back, throughout my wanderings up and down the various corridors, to thoughts about Eastern State’s role in telling and silencing historical narratives.  One of the art exhibits, by Cindy Stockton Moore, featured fifty portraits of people who were murdered by people once incarcerated in Eastern State Penitentiary.  The aim of this exhibit, according to Moore’s description, was to “create a more complete picture of the men and women imprisoned here, and the consequences of their actions,” since the victims of crimes aren’t often discussed in tours or exhibits today.

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After leaving the exhibit, my friend who I went with said that, until seeing that exhibit, she hadn’t realized that she’d been putting herself in the place of the prisoners during our entire visit, that she’d been imagining what it was like to be incarcerated at Eastern State instead of imagining what it was like to be harmed by someone who was incarcerated there.  I said that I agreed, that I too had been focusing solely on the horrors of solitary confinement and a loss of freedom experienced by prisoners both past and present, but that I thought that forcing visitors to imagine the experiences of incarcerated people without a focus on harms they may have committed was valuable.  We live in a victim-centered society, in which the rights of victims- to compensation, to revenge- are often prioritized over the rights of prisoners, and are used to justify increasingly harsh punishments and restrictions on freedom.  In Pennsylvania, rhetoric about victims’ rights has been used to pass both the Revictimization Relief Act- which was declared unconstitutional for its restrictions on free speech- and House Bill 1089, which forces prisoners to pay restitution to the victims of crimes they committed.  I think that both people who commit harms and people who experience those harms deserve to have their stories heard, to be understood complexly and in the context of larger social structures.  But since we live in a society that privileges one of those experiences while demonizing the other, I think it’s valuable for an historical site to put aside the often-heard narratives in favor of amplifying the ones too often ignored.

All of which brings me back to our reading for this week, mainly Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s discussion of power and silence in the production of history.  Trouillot discusses how historical narratives are produced in a way that amplifies some stories and versions of history while silencing others, and through his examples- such as the story of Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci- attempts to bring voice to the silences of history and show the operation of power in the construction of narratives.  I could see how Moore might claim that, through her art exhibit at Eastern State, she is doing that same work, bringing voice to murder victims whose stories aren’t told, while the experiences of the people who killed them are immortalized in Eastern State’s state of stabilized ruin.  However, if Moore, or anyone, were to make that claim, based on Trouillot’s analysis of power I would disagree, because in a broader context of how prisoners’ and crime victims’ narratives are told, victims are not the ones silenced.  All of this leads me to wonder if silencing the past- in specific parts, and in specific contexts- can play an important role in uncovering other, more pervasive, silences.  If one silences an often heard narrative to amplify a faint echo of an often-forgotten other, I don’t think that silence is really a silence at all.

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Activists: the ignored outside history makers

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When reading Filene’s article I was struck by an astounding omission; although he focused on “outsider” histories, including exhibits on the hidden history of slavery in New York, and similarly reenactments of slave escapes, he did not include the millions of activists, organizers, and free teachers who brought history to the masses. Free schools hold an important place in “public history” from their crucial role in the Freedom Summer efforts of SNCC, where they empowered local youth and the community, without degrees of PHDs, just a passion for people’s history, to “teach ins” at Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, struggles over social justice are where history gets played out most dramatically in public. Thus, people who teach, wether it is on one’s repressed racial history, (the Black Panther Party schools and even current ethnic studies programs) or repressed histories in general, like those of the labor wars, are the most public of historians. History is a weapon and a battleground, as activist historians like Howard Zinn know. Zinn brought people’s history to anyone and everyone with his accessible writing and creative and passionate revolutionary spirt, and was also a civil rights and anti-war organizer and campaigned for peace and justice until his death. I think A People’s History of the United States is a work of public history, even if Zinn had a tenuously held onto teaching position. His legacy is continued by people who post on tumblr about the history of slavery and colonialism, journalists who use history in their arguments for policy change like reparations, and the countless organizers who use history to build a more just future.