Reflection on Campus Survey

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Throughout the process of the campus survey, one of the things that really struck me was the different presentations of history within various campus spaces. Bryn Mawr’s history was characterized in radically different lights, depending on the coded “use” of the space.

History in the admissions building, obviously used almost exclusively by the public and prospective students/families, consisted of a big display for Hepburn, a bunch of stock photos of campus architecture, and a plaque dedicated to a chairman. Books written by faculty and alumni were available, but not displayed as prominently and they did not appear to be as handled as the battered Hepburn books.

Other areas are similarly formal. The main floor of Canaday and its nameless photos of benefactors. The cloister and the indescipherable plaques and the enigmatic broken coffin. Thomas Great Hall and the presidential portraits. However, some of these spaces contrast strikingly with themselves. Other floors of Canaday, especially those populated by student carrels, display posters, murals, and other works more representative of how the students view Bryn Mawr and its history. The cloister hosts events, specifically Lantern Night, that is tied in deeply with BMC history. Next to Thomas’ presidents stands Athena and her offerings, a living part of BMC history and tradition.

For me, the coded use of space has intense ramifications on what type of history can be displayed and in what manner. Public-usage spaces are required (by whom? Admins? To me, required by assumption and expectation as much as by administration) to present a specific perspective on Bryn Mawr history for marketing purposes, as well as general acceptance in the community at large. Student-usage spaces, however, can be far more open and present a radically different portrayal of BMC history, one that is more amenable to the current student-held values and aspirations.

Even so, I dare to venture that both present a polarized view of BMC’s history. While there is no “true” history to ever be found in any case, regardless of what one is studying, a more accurate historical representation may be found somewhere between both poles. Regardless, I wonder if that search for accuracy would even prove useful in a public history setting. The end result may only serve to alienate both groups, representing neither fully enough to be embraced on either side. Such representations are professions of identity, as much as they are displays of history. Both sides are saying, differently, “This is who we are, based on who we were.”

Interfacing Between the Micro and the Macro

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I was surprised when I read that the Swarthmore Afro-American Students Society (SASS) chose to end their sit-in at Swarthmore College in 1969 before the administration had met their demands, mainly related to increasing black enrollment, because the President of Swarthmore, Courtney Smith, died of a sudden heart attack.  Reading this astonished me because the death of a college’s president, in the middle of protests over demands he was refusing to meet, seemed so unlikely, both in its timing and its unforeseen impact on SASS’ sit-in, that I had a hard time believing it happened.

But while this individual turn of history is surprising and tragic and important, what it got me thinking about more is the various levels on which history can play out.  In the case of BCM, there’s individual campus movements–as documented, for example, on Black at Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore’s Black Liberation 1969 archive–and then there’s looking at the overall trends of BCM movements on the national level, which Ibram H. Rogers does effectively in The Black Campus Movement.  Obviously the individual and national, micro and macro, levels of history are not at all separate, but I do wonder about the complexities of having conversations about individual change on individual campuses when those campuses exist in a national context, and having conversations about movements on a national level when individual cases can be so idiosyncratic.

The course of Swarthmore’s black campus movement was altered by the surprising death of its president; understanding how President Smith’s death affected SASS’s activism is key to understanding Swarthmore’s history, but probably wouldn’t make it into any book on the scale of Rogers’.  When compiling resources for projects like Black at Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore’s Black Liberation 1969 archive, how can one balance the need for national context with the attention to individual turning points?  How can campus activists advocate for change on their campuses that is rooted both in their individual campus’ history and a national or international context?  If one is looking to archive student activism at a specific college or university, like Jarrett Drake is at Princeton, what role can archives play in mediating between the micro and the macro of history?  Should college archives just document materials relating to their college, or should they attempt to archive materials that help illuminate a broader context?

Some of these questions feel like they should have simple answers, but the more I think about the readings for this week, the complicated interconnectedness of the national BLM movement and specific cases at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr with their specific contexts and turning points, I’m not so sure where the line can be drawn between one college’s history and the history of a national college movement.

Archival Work is So Emotional?

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Honestly, this week’s readings overwhelmed me. I think I was over-identifying with Jarrett Drake and also the archival efforts that Lae’l Hughes-Watkins write about because of my role as an editor of the college news. When Drake wrote, “You matter. Your experience matters. Your activism matters,” I had this weird moment where I realized that I wrote almost identical words, or expressed an extremely similar sentiment, in a couple of the letters from the editors last semester. It’s hard work to convince people that archives matter, it’s so emotional. It really is a lot of convincing people that they have important things to say and are valuable…which is really intense emotional labor.

It’s bizarre how much care-taking is involved with archiving, which Hughes-Watkins refers to when they talk about the challenges of the oral history project being gaining the interviewees’ trust. At the same time, it makes a lot of sense because you’re working with people’s stories, which in the end is all we have. It reminds me of this anthology of Latina narratives called Telling to Live–here’s the summary of the novel from the Amazon page (hehe):

Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories.
The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures.
This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower.

I included this because I think this book says something about trust, ownership, and storytelling. This book is complicated because I wonder if the Latina’s who offer their stories would feel comfortable participating in an oral history project, for example. It seems to me that they chose to create an anthology because they needed a separate space–which makes sense to me. It’s frustrating because as a Latina I completely understand not trusting institutions (archives or even a newspaper like the college news) with the stories of marginalized groups. I guess I’m just so overwhelmed because if I want to be someone who works in academia and academic institutions, it hurts me to know that I can’t be my community’s safe space. No matter what I do, it feels like the harmful history of the spaces I choose to be in will alienate me from the communities that I say I’m working to heal.

Investing in the Archives

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The “Announcing ASAP” post from Princeton brings to mind many things we’ve talked about over the course of the semester, both in relation to archives and alternative histories but also just about mass involvement in the creation of history.

I was particularly surprised by how much Jarrett Drake’s announcement reminded me of Filene’s piece on “outsider history-makers” from the second week of class. Like Filene, Drake is arguing for more passionate connections between the public and more traditional methods of history-making. His way of speaking about the project seemed to ask for a similar kind of investment on the part of people outside of traditional history creation and/or curation fields. This also relates to our own discussions of the Bryn Mawr archives, and the way that alums often don’t see value in their own collections. Drake’s way of speaking about student lives and campus activism really brought out how necessary it is for people to care about the creation of history, and the impact that it can have when we can collect stories from diverse places.

Drake specifically asks students to invest in the archives, which I think is a fascinating way of thinking about this entire process. As is clear from Roger’s book, having archival records of activism is absolutely necessary in order to be able to talk about movements that questioned the system and traditional narratives. It is an investment to put time and energy into documenting the present, and we can absolutely see the way that that investment can pay off in the long (and even the short) run.

The Responsibilities of a Public Historian

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Often when one speaks of original research, whether it be thesis-based or otherwise, there is emphasis placed on finding gaps in the historiography of a particular topic. A thesis candidate is supposed to work off of primary sources in order to draw his or her own unique conclusions; in a sense, he or she must write about something on which nothing has been written before. There is a certain amount of excitement that goes along with this, a feeling of “trailblazing” and becoming an expert in a specific area of history. However, as I browsed through the different entries to the Black at Bryn Mawr blog, I noticed how open its creators have been about the difficulties of this kind of “trailblazing” work. For example, in her reflection on the naming of the Enid Cook Center (http://blackatbrynmawr.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2015/09/03/black-at-bryn-mawr-and-the-enid-cook-31-center/), Grace Pusey expresses her concern that “the story [she] told about Enid Cook could very well become *the* story of Enid Cook.”

Writing a research paper is stressful by nature, and there must be a considerable amount of additional stress involved in turning that research into a public project. When it is difficult to decipher the meaning of a source, or when a body of evidence contradicts the thesis statement, it is tempting to skip over the problem and go on as if it does not exist. However, if there is a chance that the final project will be the first someone has heard of a given topic, the consequences of such oversights can be especially great. A successful public history project, it would then seem, is able to negotiate the careful balance between doing its subject justice and revealing what about it remains unknown. In order for the project to be taken seriously, a public historian must be an authority on his or her subject without pretending to be the authority.

Bryn Mawr not only is racist; it is ingrown!

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The two part blog post (Unwavering Dissent) was probably the least surprising thing I read on the blog, at least regarding the slowness at which Bryn Mawr’s administration moves when dealing with things that it would rather just go away. The line “the administration’s noncommittal response” almost made me laugh because it was so sad, because it is so true even today.

The parallels between the administrations slow response to dealing with the admission of black student to Bryn Mawr, with giving them their own cultural space on campus, with treatment of black staff, and today’s racial issues (specifically the confederate flag incident among others) just demonstrates how this is not a new issue at Bryn Mawr. Racism is not the limitation of what is ingrown in Bryn Mawr’s administration; it is everything that goes along with it the administration’s noncommittal stance towards social progression. It is also still the current process that if Bryn Mawr students (especially any students of color) who want to change anything at Bryn Mawr “they would have to fight for, loudly.”

Documenting the Senses

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Looking through Swarthmore’s Black Liberation Archive, I was particularly struck by their page dedicated to the soundtrack of the liberation. On the one hand, music seems like a very obvious aspect of a political movement (witness the recent Stephen Colbert skit on good Simon & Garfunkel songs to match our current presidential candidates), and on the other, it opened a lot of questions for me: documenting written sources and physical artifacts is all very well and good, but how does one go about recording the other ways we perceive events in our everyday lives– the sounds, the smells, the tastes?

Already Swarthmore’s page is having problems: of the twenty-five songs they have posted, two (“Pata Pata,” Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain) have been removed due YouTube copyright violations in the time since this site first went live. Furthermore, a digital exhibit automatically robs the observer of their ability to touch documents and to conduct physical examinations of an archive’s contents (of course the physical documents are still present somewhere, but then you run into the question of access again).

I think a case can be made for the power of music in demonstrations, but we should also be asking the question of whether it matters that documentation of smell and taste (and perhaps a lesser extent touch and sound) is often lost in the archiving process. We learned from Trouillot that all archives carry with them inherent silences– it’s part of the process. How would you go about preserving smell and taste, anyway? Most likely someone would have to write down how it felt, and that changes the nature of the source, and then…

The short version of all this, really, is that I think the archival process is extremely long and complicated, and I’m really impressed with how Swarthmore handled it. They were right to recognize the importance of music in the student movements, and to make that available to researchers– frankly, I think it was a brilliant idea. The question of maintenance remains, but they do list on the site an option to contact them in the event that you have questions or have found an error, and I’m not sure there’s a better option than that right now.

“Patricidal Memory and the Passerby” by Rebecca Schneider // Black Liberation 1969

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“Patricidal Memory and the Passerby” by Rebecca Schneider

In another class, I had to read this really, really interesting piece by Rebecca Schneider. We talked about it briefly in class, but her piece talks a lot about the interaction between the monument and the onlooker. It was super insightful. I really recommend looking at it!

http://sfonline.barnard.edu/ps/schneide.htm

Black Liberation 1969

I really liked browsing through the Black Liberation 1969 Archive. I found the interactive 1969 Mapping the Sit In quite useful (I also am really curious as to how to do that on Omeka??). It took me a little bit to find out the events in chronological order to be honest, but it was a really neat idea regardless. Luckily, the Timeline of Events was a bit easier for me to understand and navigate.

One thing that really shocked me what the FBI surveillance of the black student population of Swarthmore College. I supposed that I hadn’t even considered the FBI’s involvement until I browsed the collection. A part of me is terrified that this ever existed, but the other part of me is really happy that the physical evidence is able to be displayed on a accessible medium that can be used to educate other people.

I suppose it bothered me that this event happened so close to us, and impacted so many people, and yet this is the first time I’m ever hearing about it. I’m not sure why this is, because it seems to me that this was a very significant event, but I’ve never studied it in class, and I haven’t heard any students on campus talking about it. I recognize that it happened quite some time ago, but I think an event like this would be hard to forget, and would even be passed from generation to generation. This opens up other questions about the passage of memory, the transmission of information, and what events are deemed important enough to pass on.

 

Regarding Quita Woodward

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A memorial gift was offered that was of special significance. Quita Woodward, of the class of 1932, was a student beloved by all, gay, friendly, intrepid in the face of advancing ill health, bound to graduate at Bryn Mawr, bound also to let nothing darken her happiness there. Her death, in the year after her graduation, inexorable as merciless ill-ness had made it, was a desperate blow to all of the many who had known her and been so deeply attached to her. As Bryn Mawr lives, so her memory is to live, in the wing and the reading room which carry her name. It is, somehow, a memory that has preserved the impression of the beauty and happiness of her short life, not the unreconciled sorrow that goes with untimely death. Her father and mother subscribed to the new Library wing, particularly for the housing of the departments of Art and Archaeology, and for the specially designated reading room for the students to be called the Quita Woodward Room.

— From What Makes a College: A History of Bryn Mawr (p. 165-66)

How to Consume a Memorial

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“It’s like Berlin. You see the devastation”

Poster of Friedrich Seidenstücker photograph. Reichstag, Berlin 1946.

Poster of Friedrich Seidenstücker photograph. Reichstag, Berlin 1948.

This comment by Joel Shapiro referring to his proposal that the World Trade Center site to Berlin in the decades after World War II struck me as odd. Berlin, in its current state, is full of very constructed, very planned new monuments and memorials. Perhaps because of the destruction that served as memorial in the decades after the war, Berlin is a prime example of a city deep in “memorial mania.” From memorials for the Berlin Wall and its victims, to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, to memorials of Soviet prison camps, Berlin keeps building new memorials and expanding existing ones. And these sites generate so much revenue. People come to Berlin to see these sites. However, in order to charge people money to remember, you need to build something. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is free, but has a museum that charges for various services, such as translation. The Hohenschönhausen memorial to political persecution in the GDR charges admission. Aside from direct revenue from visitors to the memorials, the city profits from tourists travelling to these various points of memorial. This begs the question: what is the purpose of a memorial, especially a memorial as large in scale as these? What should a memorial do to us, as the viewing public? How should we interact with the memorial? Should there be any money exchanged from public to memorial at all? Does your relationship to a memorial change when part of it is monetized?

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Berlin

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Berlin

People will pay to process the memorializing. The World Trade Center Memorial itself is free, but an adult ticket to the museum is $24. I visited the memorial in the spring of 2011 and the museum had not yet opened. Growing up outside of Manhattan, there were kids in my school that lost family members on 9/11. It was one of the most upsetting things to see people taking selfies in front of the reflecting pools. I came with an understanding that there was a very particular way to experience a memorial: to be somber, quiet, and reflective. Even if you had no connection to the people or moment being memorialized, you respected the space in that way, because other people around you might be connected. However, for other people around me at the memorial, it was like any other tourist attraction: something fun and interesting to pose with and then move on quickly to the next spot. The emotional disconnect that I felt between myself and the rest of the public was so intense. Rather than being a space of collective mourning or remembrance, it was a space of individualized consumption. Perhaps I think (or still think) too highly of public spaces of memorial. Maybe for most people, memorials are something to take a picture of, tell your friends you saw it, and move on. Is this because of the public? Or are we consuming memorials this way because the design of them guides us to do so? Or are we consuming memorials because we are paying to see them, directly or indirectly through transportation costs?

Selfie at Reflecting Pool 9/11 Memorial

Selfie at Reflecting Pool
9/11 Memorial

My experience at the World Trade Center Memorial influenced my decision not to go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. Instead, I stayed in Krakow. While wandering around the city, I came across a giant billboard with a smiling woman in front of the Auschwitz camp. It was advertising an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow titled “Poland – Israel – Germany: The Experience of Auschwitz.” This was exactly what I feared most about visiting the Auschwitz Memorial: being part of a collective having an entirely different emotional experience from me. I asked my friend when he returned to Krakow from the Auschwitz Memorial if he saw people taking pictures like the smiling woman. He said that he did and that it added a strange other layer to the experience of remembering to understand how others were engaging with the space. With all of this money spent on memorials, they still do not encourage public remembrance. Most are instead public art projects, like the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the 9/11 Memorial in New York. Therefore, they should be listed as such and other spaces should be given for public memorials.

Poland – Israel – Germany: The Experience of Auschwitz MOCAK Exhibit Ad

Poland – Israel – Germany: The Experience of Auschwitz
MOCAK Exhibit Ad