This week’s readings made me think about the historians relationship with the structure of knowledge and sources.  Our relationship is changing.  We can now digitally reformulate the structure of knowledge to find different kinds of information from our sources.  This is a little bit disconcerting, because I am also learning how to deal with traditional structures of knowledge, like archives.  In my case, I am actually learning how to digitally structure knowledge first, before I’ve had first-hand experience working in physical archives. Interesting.

Reading Highlights

Erickson

This was a good example of a historian who decided to use a relational database for information management.  Erickson learned that “how we organize and interact with information from sources can affect what we discover in them.”  Once she had her ‘digital note cards’ she was able to sort and sift, and get ‘granular’ with the information she had collected.  Full-text searchability was a key factor here, which allowed her to organize what she had noted, but also to recognize new patterns.   The database was relational because Erickson was able to see how some information related to other information in ways she had not previously recognized.  I was encouraged by this example.

Hitchcock

I appreciated this article because it helped me see how historical authority has been based on archival work.  Archival work can be emotional and visceral, because of a sense of direct connection to the past.  Digitization changes the historians access to sources, takes them out of context of the archival structure.  Furthermore, Hitchcock pinpoints keyword searching as a factor in melting the archival structure.  I am not sure I agree with the statement that a changing relationship with archives “undermines … our claim to social authority and authenticity as interpreters of the past” (89).  Then again, I haven’t yet found something in an archive and had the pleasure of authoritatively interpreting it.  The point is taken that if all sources are digital, and therefore, reproducible, the historians special understanding of a source (found in an archive) could become less authoritative.

It seems like the readings this week caused some discomfort in our group.  We read about the divide between professional and amateur historians, the academy and the public, memory and history.  The instigator of this discomfort appears to be the internet.  That is to say, digital tools, spaces, and practices in relation to history as they are used by professional historians and amateur historians are illuminating a divide.

While I am keen to earn professional credentials, I believe public interest in history should be cultivated.  We are all amateurs at something, we all have unique memories.  I believe the internet/digital age is and will continue to make history accessible, perhaps someday, transparent. Professional historians can now learn to participate in the process.

Reading Highlights

Madsen-Brooks 

The discussion about historical credibility, politicization, and professional intervention is necessary because of the nature of a polarized society.  I am not surprised by this.  I agree that professional historians are presented “with new opportunities and modes for expanding historical literacy” online.  I do not think wish to police public memory, fight conspiracy theories, etc.  I do like the role of educating others on how to be more critical of primary sources, and find ways for ‘citizen history’ projects to intersect with professional research.

Wolff

This discussion seemed to be about historians’ comfort level with open-access sources and processes of knowledge dissemination.  Of course historians benefit from databases and digitized sources and we use these more and more.  We may get access through professional subscriptions or our association with educational institutions.  However, the general public also has access to “vast swaths of historical information and analysis…on the open web.”  This is where we “share a space” with the public.  My intellectual heart skipped a beat when I read “the normative form of access to the past will be electronic.”  I agree and am excited about the possibilities.

Unsworth

I heard the old “publish or perish” mantra in my undergraduate history courses.  It’s a scary proposition to think I have to publish research to earn my credentials, but really, who is going to read it? Unsworth basically says we should find the audience, which is perhaps not entirely academic, or utterly specialized.   The problem is how to be effective or profitable as electronic publishers learn how to charge for their services appropriately.   Readership and communication between professionals about their field is still important, and digital publishing is another avenue to maintain these vital paths in our field.

Cubitt, Geoffrey. History and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. eBook Comprehensive Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 2, 2015).

I was extremely intrigued by Unsworth’s differentiation between memory and history, which is in essence the differentiation between professional and public history.  This divide has been placed on a public platform because of the digital age.  Cubitt has some interesting things to say about the nature of the relationship between history and memory.  His argument is more plainly stated than Wolff’s.

The title of chapter 1 for instance is “History and Memory:  An Imagined Relationship”.  He discusses the ways in which people have tried to relate memory and history and suggests that they can be reconciled only by understanding that they are different beings and have separate roles to play in the social and academic experiences.  Cubitt’s discussion of the profession is extremely powerful and I think contributes to our debate on what makes a historian, and perhaps refutes Madsen-Brooks’ argument that everyone is a historian (“I too, am a historian”).

For instance Cubitt cites Collingwood’s argument about the separation between memory and history which can also be seen in the case study about African American Confederates in the Madson-Brooks article.

“This imagination, Collingwood implies, is
concerned with conceptual issues (ones of causation, for example or of social structure, or of long-term continuity and change) that derive from the realm of historical thought rather than from remembered experience. The essential achievement of historical reasoning is to rescue us from a slavish dependence on memory’s limited and subjective form of consciousness.”

This book lends new insight onto the historical process and why it is so important to preserve the academic rigor that marks our profession. It also helps the reader to have a greater understanding of the relationship between history and memory which is part of this ongoing debate about the digital humanities.

The readings for this week were focused on audience and authorship and seemed to advocate a risky gamble;  engage in online publishing and hope that there is an audience for it.  According to the Madsen-Brooks and Wolff readings there is evidence of huge interest in historical topics as can be viewed in their case studies.  The public interest is beginning to dominate historical authorship which is a problem for academics who, for the most part, have not chosen to engage with this crowdsourced narrative (Madsen-Brooks).

This public process in which anyone can publish anything online is leading to major problems with the academic process and both Wolff and Unsworth deal with this in a more realistic light (Madsen-Brooks advocates an all-out academic overhaul).  Wolff makes a powerful differentiation between history and memory by quoting David Blight,

 “History–what trained historians do–is a reasoned reconstruction of the past rooted in research; critical and skeptical of human motive and action….Memory, however, is often treated as a sacred set of potentially absolute meanings and stories, possessed as the heritage or identity of a community.  Memory is often owned; history, interpreted…”

The power of memory permeates the human experience and allows history to become not only an intellectual pursuit, but an emotional one.  To engage with the public, historians may need to act as authoritative story tellers–there should be interpretation in the academic sense, but there should also be an understanding of the audience.  This is not to say that academic work should be done in layman’s terms or be “dumbed down”, in fact, scholarship should be emphasized in order to improve public understanding/appreciation and trust in specialization and expertise.    This is at the root, I would argue, of the divide between academics and the public; each have underestimated the other.

The Unsworth article deals with this issue head on by suggesting that historians must build up their relationship with a new audience.  He states that,  “I suggested that we could enlarge the audience for humanities scholarship, not by dumbing it down, but by making it more readily available. Maybe if we did that, scholars would find an audience first, and a publisher second, instead of the other way around.”  This mentality is attractive to this historian who ultimately wants to write as he/she has always done, that is to say with academic rigor, but also wants to be read.  This seems to be the only way in which the historian will survive.

Each of these articles was problematic and I am still sorting through how I perceive each solution to a rapidly growing problem.  I agree that the audience needs to expand, but I am in favor of a solution that does not contribute to the deterioration of the academy; I have not seen this solution in any of the articles presented so far.  What does everyone think about this?  Does the digital age mean that we, as professionals must adjust at the detriment of expertise and scholarship, or is there a way around this?