Monthly Archives: April 2016

Mindful use of Technology regarding Public History

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This week’s readings got me thinking about the ways in which technology is mindfully, or unmindfully, used in the pursuit of public history. Unmindful use can span from limiting a project’s accessibility to truncating an artifact’s meaning, even not vetting the authenticity of the material. Though technology use can allow public history projects to be accessed by a much wider audience, it must be used judiciously and mindfully, in order to preserve the integrity of the discipline.

Sharon Leon, writing for the National Council on Public History, explained a common issue plaguing digital public history projects: Even though they promise to reach out to a larger audience and pool of contributors, the digital medium can reproduce the same class and culture barriers to accessibility. Access to the internet and technological devices is a constant pressure for any digital project of this sort. In the same way that physical exhibits can, intentionally or not, bar access to certain populations, digital projects also restrict those without access to technology. While public history projects cannot be expected to provide technological access to all interested parties, the creation, maintenance, and mission of the project needs to reflect this issue. What such projects can mindfully design are various accessibility features, such as for those with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities. Such features are widely available and, as Leon argues, are integral to mindfully  crafting a digital public history project.

Other accessibility tweaks are more minor in nature: Rebecca Onion, writing for Slate, celebrated her cataloging of Slate’s historical blog posts in a timeline fashion. This allowed for users to more easily and intuitively navigate the various artifacts. This is a seemingly minor addition to reorganize the content, but it allows for a significantly more accessible project. Users can now browse a specific time period, compare changes over time, and myriad other uses.

Mindfulness in public history projects stretches beyond design, however. Another article by Rebecca Onion argues against the flippant use of historical artifacts by Twitter “historical images” accounts. Such accounts rarely provide any context for the images that are used, let alone links to further investigation. Worse yet, some images are not even authentic, but are photoshopped or misidentified. Any group or individual who pursues such a project (and those Twitter accounts fall firmly within the Public History sphere, even if not coordinated by academics) need to be mindful of the authenticity of their posts. Further, context should be available. While not all who frequent the project will be looking for deeper engagement with the subject matter, the knowledge that the topic is, in fact, deeper than just the picture is important. History is not just names, dates, pictures, or artifacts. It is all of the context surrounding those things. History is not just the who and when, it is the why and how. Not being mindful of this element of history undermines the integrity of the field and presents a poor, neglectful, and inaccurate image to the public at large.

TW: Rape, Sexual Assault, University of Virginia, Sexual Harm

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From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill, We’re gonna get drunk tonight.
The faculty’s afraid of us, They know we’re in the right,
So fill your cups, your loving cups, As full as full can be,
And as long as love and liquor last, We’ll drink to the U. of V.

 

Oh, I think we need another drink! Heh!
I think we need another drink! Heh!
I think we need another drink! Heh!
I think we need another drink! To the glory of the U. Va.

 

All you girls from Mary Washington and R.M.W.C,
Never let a Virginia man an inch above your knee,
He’ll take you to his fraternity house and fill you full of beer,
And soon you’ll be the mother of a bastard Cavalier!

-Rugby Road, Traditional UVA Fight Song

 

All the girls from Sweet Bush

Like guys from W&L.
All the girls from Hollins
Like Vee Mees, we can tell.
Now Careful girls, don’t let them drink
And coax your from your dress,
‘Cause as sure as there is whiskey
They’ll puke and make a mess.

A hundred Delta Gammas,
A thousand AZD’s,
Ten thousand Pi Phi bitches,
Who get down on their knees.
But the ones that we hold true,
The ones that we hold dear,
Are the ones who stay up late at night,
And take it in the rear.

 

All the first-year women
Are morally uptight.
They’ll never do a single thing
Unless they know it’s right.
But then they come to Rugby Road
And soon they’ve seen the light,
And you never know how many men
They’ll bring home every night.

 

She’s a helluva twat from Agnes Scott;
She’ll fuck for fifty cents.
She’ll lay her ass upon the grass,
Her panties on the fence.
You supply the liquor.
And she’ll supply the lay.
And if you can’t get it up, you sunuva a bitch,
You’re not from UVa.

 

The BC girls are Catholic
They’re virgins through and through
But when they see a Cavalier
They know just what to do
They hike their skirts; they drop their drawers;
They back against the wall
Because they know a Wahoo Fuck
Is the greatest of them all.

– Rugby Road Alternative Verses

 

The original article was removed by Rolling Stone, but you can find it HERE.

The response article published by Rolling Stone can be found HERE.

 

I’m really happy that Take Back the Archive gives individuals space to archive experiences of sexual harm at the University of Virginia. Granted, I’m not sure if I just couldn’t figure out the site, or if the website that was intended to achieve the digital collection wasn’t up yet, but I couldn’t navigate it to see any actual documents. So, I decided to do a little researching on my own. Continue reading →

We’re All in This Together (well some of us, anyway)

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I’m really glad that we read the minutes and descriptions of some other campus history projects happening across the country because I now feel like we aren’t alone. Knowing that there is a community of dedicated people out there that share common goals for their institutions fueled by a desire to recognize elements of campus histories that are purposefully glossed over or ignored gives me hope for our future. I think the questions raised in all of the breakout sessions were very pertinent to Bryn Mawr and reflect many structural issues such as the short time students (and faculty) are on campus and lack of administrative support.

I think the addition of the Giesking reading about students’ navigation of space was interesting and very relevant considering our previous class discussions about the physical spaces on campus that we inhabit and how they shape our experiences.  It is interesting to me to consider how disrupting traditional spaces not only can physically change the landscape but as a result, the institution’s narrative.  I really liked the ideas for a display in Princeton’s student center that Jarrett and Sofi’s friend (whose name is escaping me at the moment!) talked about a few weeks ago, and I think its because I like the idea of transforming/challenging the traditional use of physical space that keeps with the typical narrative of “who goes to Princeton.”  By adding a display of student activist efforts, they would be making a physical intervention which not only would be accessible to a wider range of people (prospective students, staff, faculty, current students, etc.) than a paper or class discussion but would also serve as a tangible reminder of darker histories and stories not popularized.

Space and Gender at Bryn Mawr

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Gieseking’s article made me think about the ways space, gender, and queerness operate here. When I first arrived at Bryn Mawr I was shocked by all the nakedness, wether it was on Lantern Night, skinny dipping, or during hell week. I had always thought of colleges as kind of serious intellectual spaces, but here space is intertwined with how we utilize our bodies to express sexuality, have fun, and participate in community. The fountains in particular are important for these rituals, which I don’t know if are unique to Bryn Mawr. These places also create bodily and physical changes in identity and experience. Gieseking writes, “In the interviews, the institution was defined and delimited by the students’ everyday spaces, acts, traditions and rules of the social and physical campus. The scale of the institution also absorbed traditional notions of home as most participants referred to the campus or a dormitory on campus as ‘home’.” (282) I think these “scales” also relate to our experiences at Bryn Mawr, where place informs class and gender as well. The skinny dipping is one example of how the space of the women’s college can create a sexually liberatory environment, but it also relates to creating and imposing white middle class identity on students.

The early Bryn Mawr literally segregated students by class, with students paying different amounts for different size dorms. Here space illustrated and informed class relations. Furthermore, maids lived in smaller corridor rooms, segregating them from campus and the community and imposing an “othered” status on them. Sometimes I think living off campus can function sort of similarly, because many students do it for financial reasons. I know students who live at home, or even work off campus, which separates them from the rest of campus. The experience of work itself creates a different relationship with the institution for students, as they are part of not just the student community but a more hidden community of staff and workers. An upper middle class student might never really interact with these people, or even be polite to other students while they are at work in places like the dining hall.

Space, Love, and Racism

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Bill Bryans from Oklahoma State University expressed my concerns exactly about the renaming of Thomas in his reflections on the potential renaming of Murray Hall on his campus:

I believe using the question of Murray’s name on the building offers the opportunity for discussing just what has been the history of race and prejudice both in Oklahoma and on the campus.  Such a discussion, it seems to me will generate greater understanding and reconciliation going forward than simply removing his name.

Having spaces on campus that openly contradict the rosy historical narrative of steady progression that the other makers of campus history (PR/communications and marketing offices, diversity office, development, alumni affairs, etc.) construct is important. This is not the outward message of the school, but a story for those in the school to understand and make sense of. In some ways it would be false to remove the traces of racism that exist. Rather than remove the aspects of racism that exist, it would be meaningful to have all students at some point in their careers at their college (perhaps orientation, but maybe later) participate in a program like “Black at Bryn Mawr” or “Black and Blue” to understand fully the institution that they identify with. Complicating your understanding is a sometimes-difficult process when you attach so much love and affinity for campus spaces.

I think particularly of the description given by Elizabeth ’37 of space on Mount Holyoke’s Campus:

I have always been crazy about the reading room. As you know it’s a replica of Westminster Hall in London, on a somewhat smaller scale. . . . I was thrilled when I was given a carrel. Honor students were allowed to have carrels in the stacks. I loved it because it made me feel like a scholar (283).

Thinking back on Helen Horowitz and Alma Mater it is clear that these spaces are designed with particular ideas about what it means to be academic. Because these spaces are made to turn us into scholars and therefore empower us, it is difficult to simultaneously understand them as representing racism, bigotry, and inequality for others.

This is why I am attracted to the idea of creating a layered map, drawn from historical perspectives and also contemporary students’ understandings of campus spaces. Each layer can serve as different interpretations of the same space. I was quite impressed by the way Erin Bernard handled this in her maps. I think maps are most often seen as truth (and thus objective) whether they are topographical maps, political maps, or transportation maps, though clearly they never can be without bias. Having a map with multiple perspectives calls into question the “official” map and allows for more voices than just those in power to be heard.  There can be interpretations of spaces as fostering love and community but also racism and hate.

Student Exhibits vs. Staff/Admin Exhibits

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The Bryn Mawr Now article, ‘CATALOGING FEVER’ STRIKES STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS, got me thinking about the important differences between student exhibits and admin exhibits. Expanding that thought into the larger Public History world, it could be seen as a difference between participant-created exhibits and those crafted by outside forces (ex. government, those representing though not part of a given group, etc.)

While both student and admin exhibits have a good deal in common, there are important differences between the two. Student exhibits or projects inherently express the needs, desires, and character of the student community. They are driven by something of a grass-roots movement, pushing for a goal, uncovering an important historical point, or, as in the case of the article, allowing information to be integrated into archives for the benefit of all students. Conversely, admin exhibits are a reflection of either what that particular department or individual needs at a given time (much like the student, but at a distance from the lived experience of the institution) or what that department/individual believes would be beneficial to or representative of the student body. The ownership of the exhibit or project has real implications on what is being presented or achieved and how that gets done. In the example of cataloging books from the BCC library and the Rainbow Alliance/Women’s Center collections, it is very likely that the project would not have even been proposed, had students not designated it as valuable or necessary. In the view of admins, staff, and faculty (with the possible exception of activist library staff or faculty in relevant departments), the books existed and were in an acceptable place. Accessing them through the library catalog is a nearly exclusively student concern.

Further, there are practical concerns that come into play here. Funding, time allocation, workers, space designated to such projects or exhibits, advertising/outreach (both for support and attendance, as needed), and myriad other necessities of getting the project off the ground, let alone completing the work. Admin-led projects have the benefit of funding, representation, access to the power structure (gaining clearance or support), and an inherent notoriety. However, like any bureaucracy, they are also shackled by their department, the opinions of their fellow admins, the questions of legitimacy, and the official image that any admin-led action presents. Student-led projects are much the opposite: While they don’t have the (relatively) easy access to funding or the higher-ups for clearance and representation, students have more room to pursue the project without being bound by expectations or official representations.

In the article, this situation of student-led projects is made apparent. The Chief Information Officer of Canaday (in 2004) stated that “before Information Services became involved, we wanted to make sure this would be the students’ project, rather than the library’s project.” Now, that could be to retain the students’ intent and hopes for the project itself, but the remainder of the quote clarifies her reasoning. “Once we got a commitment from the students, we provided a little seed money to kickstart the process. We funded a certain number of student-worker hours for each organization, with the understanding that they would find additional funding if the cataloging couldn’t be finished in one semester.” Translation: We’ll help you get it started, but this is on you to organize, maintain, and follow through to completion. It would have been a burden for the library staff to take on, both financially and as a time commitment. While it appears that a member of library staff trained students in the cataloging process, the burden of the work and project as a whole was entirely on the students. Both Turner and Hills, those students spearheading the cataloging projects, had to recruit other students, manage the project on a large and small scale, and pass the torch on to younger students who would continue to catalog existing and new donations. Despite that tremendous workload, a project vital to the students, and one that likely would not have existed without their intervention, was presented and (at the time of the article’s posting) well on its way to completion.

Community, Hell Week, Rah rah rah

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Gieseking’s conversations and analysis of Mount Holyoke students and how gender is spatially (re)produced at different scales made sense to me, but felt insufficient. Key moments for me were:

  • Changes in the dress code that explained feeling more free to focus on the content of their conversations and studies; students became less rooted in the body and more focused on the mind
  • Reimagining the private sphere of the home and how that might be a restorative space for women. Now that they were given access and ownership to the space, they could construct a home environment that served them. This seems to be, however, a relational space, one based in interpersonal and communal relationships. The space is not physical then, but social. This social scale seems to be one that Gieseking should have articulated or examined. It reminds me of bell hooks theory of “the homeplace” as a site of resistance for Black women. The notion is that the homeplace is the private world constructed for and by Black women, where their only task is to affirm and commune with one another to facilitate each others healing. This communal healing then becomes a political act of resistance. Gieseking alludes to this idea in his inclusion of the study of the Philippine Women Centre, and I think this theory could illuminate another scale, an intermediary scale between the body and the institutional.

Gieseking’s article, as well as the NCPH website, made me think about Hell Week because both thought along the lines of communal touchstones–most historians talk about shared spaces in campus memory, but there are also traditions which are shared temporal space that inform collective memory. wtf proposal conclusion

This is an excerpt from the Traditions Committee’s proposal for the changes to Hell Week in order to transition to WTF Week. In the conclusion, we tried to address the intent of Hell Week as a space in time. It exists counter to the rest of the year in terms of the intent or organization of time. Because I’m gay and I love this term, I think that Hell Week *queers* Bryn Mawr because it disrupts the structured time of a capitalist society: work, work, work, get rich, etc. However, Hell Week demands that you don’t work, don’t think, and you only feel and play.

Everybody Wants to Build….

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I had the fortune of hearing Nia Turner speak during my first year here, when she and Evie Rich were brought to campus to talk about their experiences as students of color on Bryn Mawr’s campus. The two knew each other from an oral history project Turner had undertaken during her time here, and much of the time was spent recollecting that relationship and speaking about Rich’s experiences at Turner’s prompting. While Turner did not mention her work with the Perry House Library, it came as no surprise when her name cropped up in this record.

Thinking about all that, though, made me consider how Turner is maintaining her ties with the Bryn Mawr community, and the implications that could have for her Perry House library. I was wandering around Canaday a few days ago (long story) and saw that the Rainbow Alliance had bookshelves filled with their books, something I hadn’t realized was present before (and is maybe connected to the LGBT project? I’m not one hundred percent sure how the privacy rules would have changed for that to happen…), but to my knowledge the ECC doesn’t hold open library hours (correct me if I’m wrong). Turner’s project, it seems, was successful… but only to a point.

So how long does student activism last? Some projects can be carried out within the span of our three or four or five years here, but a lot require maintenance– just look at Black at Bryn Mawr. How do you build projects that will outlive you when you have so little time on campus? It’s good to leave some work for the next generation, but it’s hard to know how much. And of course archives have a role to play in this, to document how far one person or another came, but documenting your activity may require the ability to realize that the next group may want something different from what you do, or that circumstances change (Perry House was still around when Turner was here, for an obvious example).  This will always be the case with movements for change, but I do think it’s particularly pronounced on campuses, because here the institutional memory of students is so short.

Or maybe we just need to find ways to ensure that someone wants to do maintenance.

The Little Things

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I was working in Special Collections the other day when I received a phone call from an older-sounding woman asking if Bryn Mawr still sold these beautiful notecards that she had purchased years previously with various watercolor designs on them. After relaying the call to someone who knew the answer to this question, I sat back in my desk chair and began to wonder what and where these notecards could possibly be. My mind instantly flashed to a moment when I had been archiving materials in one of Special Collections’ storage facilities. While in there I had seen shallow boxes filled to the brim with packets of notecards like you would see in stores. After the phone call was finished, I was told that the notecards had been sold on behalf of the Friends of the Library program that stems from the Bryn Mawr College Library. The program gives “friends of the library” the opportunity to contribute monetarily to Bryn Mawr’s library services which in turn employs interns in Special Collections, allows collections to be enhanced with new materials, allows sensitive materials to be conserved, and allows services that BMC students and faculty use to be continued and enhanced. Apparently, the notecards were something that patrons of the Friends of the Library program could purchase to help support Bryn Mawr. Though it seems to have been popular, it actually was a deficit for the College to produce, manufacture, and sell the notecards. As a result, the College had to make the decision to end the notecard sales at the potential expense of patrons that really seemed to enjoy it, and years after it ended, still request them.

This situation relates to this week’s readings in the sense that there are materials out there that have indirectly benefited students that they don’t know about and probably wouldn’t know about if not for random occurrences like the one I experienced. Additionally, the materials in question, the notecards, haven’t been officially archived. The woman who called requesting a specific set of notecards was able to get a version of them that happened to be in the storage facility after someone from Special Collections took their spare time to see if it was in stock. I am also fascinated by the idea of how non-BMC people who actively contribute to some semblance of the College’s wellbeing, and as a student —my wellbeing— view the College and its community members. To them, do we represent the images on the notecards? Sentimentality perhaps? Or are we much more tangible, something that is as multi-faceted and diverse  as the thousands of students that currently permeate this campus? It’s little things like this that get me thinking about the public history of Bryn Mawr and how it is presented as well as interpreted by those who don’t experience it daily but are still active in its existence.

The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Relying on Student Agency

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In the article “‘Cataloguing Fever’ Strikes Student Organizations’, from the February 12, 2004 edition of Bryn Mawr Now, the origins of the partnership between students and Bryn Mawr Information Services to catalogue the books of Rainbow Alliance and Sisterhood is described in the following way:

“”Before Information Services became involved, we wanted to make sure this would be the students’ project, rather than the library’s project,” Goff [Associate Chief Information Officer] says. “Once we got a commitment from the students, we provided a little seed money to kickstart the process. We funded a certain number of student-worker hours for each organization, with the understanding that they would find additional funding if the cataloging couldn’t be finished in one semester.””

Bryn Mawr–like a lot of other colleges, I imagine–continually celebrates student agency.  Students are told, time and time again, that we should take initiative and follow our passions, and that the college will support us in our endeavors.  The times that the college doesn’t live up to that promise aside–and there are plenty of those times, but I’m not going to discuss them here–there are a lot of amazing initiatives organized and executed by students, with the support of college faculty and/ or staff, and there is a lot of privilege in being in a space that provides students the resources they need to realize their ideas and passions.  However, I want to push back on this unquestioning celebration of student agency, not because student agency isn’t vital or powerful but because, too often, encouraging students to take on projects relieves the administration of the responsibility to take on those projects themselves.  The quote above, about making sure that the cataloguing project would be the students’ project rather than the library’s, seems at first aimed at promoting student agency and control–and perhaps it was meant that way–but it rubbed me the wrong way because I interpreted it as yet another instance of the responsibility for preserving and publicizing experiences of marginalized students being thrust upon those same student populations.  Black at Bryn Mawr, for example, is an amazing project and testament to student initiative and achievement, but why did it take students to start that project instead of the administration proactively committing institutional resources to researching and publicizing the histories of black students, staff, and faculty at Bryn Mawr?  Similarly, a lot of the campus public history projects detailed on the National Council of Public History’s campus history as public history working group page seem driven by a faculty member, or students, or both, but with no real initiative taken by the administration to publicize the hidden histories of marginalized groups.  I in no way want colleges to limit student agency, but relying exclusively on student agency not only relieves the administration of its obligation to make the college a more accessible and just place for students; it also ensures that these projects never exist on a long-term basis, because student agency is by definition transient.  Students attend this institution for, on average, four years and then leave, and if a student leaves without another student to carry on their project–as too often happens–then the project is dropped, and students 20 or 30 years later addressing, far too often, the same issues are left to almost reinvent the wheel.  This lack of continuity isn’t students’ fault though, and it shouldn’t be solely students’ responsibility to make sure that attention is paid to the experiences of marginalized groups at Bryn Mawr, or anywhere else.  It should also be the responsibility of the administration, who actually have the resources and continuity to carry on these projects long-term.

Going into my final project with these reflections, I want to think about the ways in which I can design a public history project that effectively establishes students and the administration as partners, neither suppressing student agency nor relying on it as the driving force.  What would such a partnership look like, and how can students work with the administration to convince them that such a partnership is valuable?