Historical Photos on Tumblr

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I was fascinated by Rebecca Onion’s assessment of historical photos on twitter, mostly because I don’t use twitter very much and have seen almost the opposite look at historical photos on tumblr. I don’t think this has to do as much with the platform as with who is running the account. Onion writes, “Lack of attribution for the artists who took the photos these accounts use is only the beginning of the problem. By failing to provide context, offering a repetitive and restricted view of what “history” is, and never linking to the many real historical resources available on the Web, these accounts strip history of the truly fun parts: curiosity, detective work, and discovery.” Obviously the character limit of twitter limits context to some extent, but tumblrs like the Queer Archive Project and Black History Album illustrate a better take on these “snapshots” of historical moments and movements.

The Queer Archive project has an actual timeline that allows users to look for photos and images from different periods, but also has a larger area of interest than the twitter accounts, including photos of book covers, publications, flyers, and even ads. One post I loved is this collection of lesbian pulp fiction covers. It doesn’t really give context, but might inspire someone to look up more information about lesbian pulp fiction. At least, it gives a great visual of some of the only representations of lesbians from this period. Some posts give actual credit and context, like one on Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial magazine, with amusing erotic photos of muscular men. The post details that it was “first published in 1951, was the first of the “beefcake” or “muscle mags” aimed at homosexuals to appreciate and eroticize the male figure. The magazines also helped to create the homosexual consumer culture beginning to thrive in these decades, with ads for films, clothing, etc.”  The Black History Album is just photo based, but gives great short descriptions, like this one for a photo of an African American woman’s basketball team from 1935. It even cites the academic book the photo came from. Therefore, I think we shouldn’t discount twitter photo blogs, especially since it is a very accessible way for people to find and gain interest in history, especially the histories of marginalized communities.

“WWII Rages On”

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The idea that World War II is one of the most “popular” events in history does not come as a surprise to me. Even in the history senior thesis seminar this past year, I think at least three people (maybe four?) wrote their theses on something that had to do with Nazi Germany, and if it’s that prevalent within the discipline, well…

I think one of the reasons for the popularity of this event in American pop culture is that it’s often viewed as a black-and-white moral event: Nazis = bad, Americans = good. Rebecca Onion comments on this in her article on popular, “historical” Twitter accounts: “Tweets of a liberated concentration-camp survivor holding a German at gunpoint are easily shareable: Everyone knows what side to be on.” It’s an event that Americans often see themselves as having reckoned with– we conquered evil by any means necessary, and here we’re unquestionably the good guys (a stance more difficult to take with World War I, the Civil War, the Vietnam War, the Spanish American War, the Gulf War, the Korean War… pretty much any other war, really, except maybe the Revolutionary War). This vision often collapses under too much scrutiny (amazing, isn’t it, that the Americans played dirty too?) and is a source of discomfort for many Americans, “victims” (Jewish Americans, e.g.) and “enemies” (Japanese Americans, e.g.) alike. Our current master narrative of WWII, perhaps even more so than other wars, does not allow for nuances.

How exactly does this relate back to archives and the issue of history in the digital age? To begin with, it got me thinking about a number of the claims in Rosenzweig’s article, particularly his comment about how digital history is forcing historians to reconsider “who our audiences really are” (739). In this case, it appears that we have a large audience readily available and at least nominally interested in history, but would they still be interested in history once it was complicated and shifted from the “big” events? I think they would be, but the question remains of how to transfer their attention. Recent efforts have often been disappointing (see, for example, National Geographic’s new History Magazine, which sensationalizes major events in history and focuses exclusively on the stories people already know in the hopes of drawing in a readership or…something), because there’s a pressure to make sure people are paying attention (that you’re making money, basically) and it’s easier to fall back on the stories people know and love. And people (Americans) love World War II.

But I think maybe the advantage of a digital project is the potential to draw a reader down a rabbit hole. While in a print magazine there’s only so much you can gather before you run out of reading material, online one thing can link to another and offer a tremendous amount of information at the drop of a hat. (Digital preservation of such links is of course an ongoing problem, but I think here there are more advantages than disadvantages overall). Maybe the trick is to use the popular events to drag people in and then lead them to the more nuanced narratives (so what NatGeo is doing, except with more… substance. I have a lot of feelings about that magazine, and most of them are not very good. But perhaps if they migrated to a digital platform they’d meet with more success).

So: people like World War II. And there are definitely ways to move beyond it–but maybe it’s not a bad idea to use those events as a hook in theory, so long as there’s a line and sinker to follow.

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.