Guest Post: Steven Elliott on Public History at the Morristown National Park

August 26, 2015 By Benjamin Park in Guest Posts, Public History Tags: American Revolution, Continental Army, military history, New Jersey, Public History 8 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Steven Elliott, a PhD candidate in American Military History at Temple University. Elliott (@EastJerseySteve) is writing a dissertation about the American War of Independence, tentatively titled “The Highlands War: Soldiers, Civilians, and Landscapes in Revolutionary New Jersey.” He has worked for seven years as a historical interpreter at Morristown National Historical Park in Morristown, New Jersey, which is the subject of this guest post.

“The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation,” Freeman Tilden, NPS

A depiction of the 1780 winter encampment at Morristown, courtesy of Morristown National Historical Park Collection.

Despite Tilden’s call to action, provocative interpretation at many National Parks remains a challenge, especially for Revolution-era sites. As many Americans learn (or re-learn) their history at public history venues, rather than through books or schooling, the Park Service can play an important role in bringing challenging interpretations to popular audiences. Yet, this can be difficult for Revolutionary-era sites, many of which were created to focus on “heroic narratives” emphasizing military campaigns and political leaders. In this post, I reflect on my personal experiences in attempting to challenge visitors’ assumptions about the Revolution, as a seasonal park guide at Morristown National Historical Park in Morristown, NJ. Continue reading →

After the Trail

August 4, 2015 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Public History Tags: 19th Century, academic publishing, academic v. popular history, American history, American Indians, Antebellum, Anti-Rent, Berkshire, Boston, Canada, colonial history, environmental history, Francis Parkman, Gold Rush, Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Indians, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Historical Society, material culture, Medford, Montreal, Native Americans, Oregon Trail, Parkman, Popular History, Public History, Publishing, Quebec, research methodology 7 Comments

Oglala Sioux Shield, ca. 1846

Consider the sixth-grader of 1907. Gertrude F. Greene’s syllabus passed over Plato, sidelined Scottish ballads, and resisted the Alaskan derring-do of The Fur-Seal’s Tooth. At the top of her reading list—first to devour on a snowy winter break from the old Belcher School—she ranked Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail (1849). In under a century, Parkman had gone from cliffhanger to canon. Why? What might students learn from a 23-year-old romantic historian’s rambles in the Indian country of 1846? Glints of Parkman’s early artistry shone through, but only when you shook up the story a bit. His sketch of life with the Oglala Sioux melded ethnography and emotion, sense and sensation. His Oregon Trail had been greatly curated, edited, and revised in the retelling. And yet Ms. Greene’s sixth-graders missed out on the juicier bits. What Parkman saw (“a strange variety of characters”), what Parkman heard (“harsh and guttaral” dialects), and what Parkman ate (buffalo, fish, dog) on the road filled his private journals, first made available to readers in the 1940s. There, stashed away in the “no-filter” notebooks that Parkman used to piece together his first blockbuster, lay the real adventure. Continue reading →

Before the Trail

August 3, 2015 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Research Tags: 19th Century, academic publishing, academic v. popular history, American history, American Indians, Antebellum, Anti-Rent, Berkshire, Boston, Canada, colonial history, environmental history, Francis Parkman, Gold Rush, Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Indians, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Historical Society, material culture, Medford, Montreal, Native Americans, Oregon Trail, Parkman, Popular History, Public History, Publishing, Quebec, research methodology 4 Comments

Francis Parkman’s Medicine Chest

Pratt must be paid. There was a route to examine one last time, and three shirts to stuff into a knapsack bulging with flannels and history books, powder and shot. The Berkshire Hills trip was a rush job; he needed to return for graduation in late August, 1844. Into the knapsack went a 4” x 2½” dusky-green journal, with shorthand notes in pencil. After a boyhood spent hunting and riding bareback on the Medford frontier, the blue-eyed Harvard senior, 20, knew how to pack for a research errand into the wilderness. Already, he boasted colorful adventures from past summer forays, fine-tuning the field skills that history professor Jared Sparks did not cover in class. Take July 1841: Scaling his first New Hampshire ravine, the rookie historian slipped and swung free, clawing air. As he “shuddered” and clung to the crag, a hard sheaf of pebbles fell, “clattering hundreds of feet” to the sunny gulf below.

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Guest Post: 84th Annual Anglo-American Conference Recap, Fashion

July 21, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Conferences, Guest Posts Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, art history, Conference, Fashion, Institute of Historical Research, material culture, museums, Public History, Sixteenth Century, Textiles, Victoria and Albert Museum Leave a comment

Kimberly Alexander holds the Ph.D. in Art and Architectural History from Boston University. A museum professional and scholar, she is adjunct faculty in the History Department at University of New Hampshire. Her book, “Georgian Shoes Stories From Colonial America” will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2016.

The 84th Anglo-American Conference of Historians was held in London at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. This year’s theme was “fashion.”

For the first time in its distinguished history, the AACH selected ‘fashion’ as its theme, confirming for many scholars the recognition that the field of fashion history, and its attendant subfields, have attained validation. To quote the conference program:

“Fashion in history is a topic which has come of age in recent years, as scholars have turned to addressing what is chic and what is style over the ages and across different cultures. The history of fashion, and the role of fashion in history, is not just confined to the study of dress and costume, but encompasses design and innovation, taste and zeitgeist, treats as its subjects both people and objects, and crosses over into related disciplines such as the history of art and architecture, consumption, retailing and technology.” Continue reading →

Teaching Trauma: Narrative and the Use of Graphic Novels in Discussing Difficult Pasts

July 14, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Academia, Commentary, Graphic History: Sequential Art & History, Pedagogy, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: 19th Century, Abolitionism, African-American history, Antebellum, Civil War, graphic novels, Holocaust, Nat Turner, pedagogy, Public History, Slavery 5 Comments

Roy Rogers kicked off yesterday’s 4-day roundtable with a review of the graphic novel, Rebel. For day two of our roundtable on graphic novels and history, I will discuss the use of graphic novels in teaching traumatic histories.

51m-NxiSLdL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ As anyone who has taught the history of slavery knows, it can be challenging. It is an important, but also emotionally loaded subject that can provoke spirited responses from students. Some students are resistant to discussing what they view as an ugly event in the past. Others may become defensive. And, for others, the history of slavery may be personal. The challenge becomes presenting the history in a thoughtful way that will engage students, but does not whitewashing history. Other traumatic events—genocide, war, etc.—can present similar pedagogical challenges.

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The Week in Early American History

June 28, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Academia, Administrative, The Week in Early American History Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, African-American history, AHA, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Charleston Shooting, Digital History, OAH, Public History, religious history, Slavery Leave a comment

TWEAH Welcome to another edition of This Week in American History. It has been a busy, yet troubling two weeks.

We would like to begin by offering our condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, of Tufts University. Dr. Schmidt-Nowara died suddenly in Paris on June 27th. Continue reading →

The Week in Early American History

June 7, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Academia, Commentary, The Week in Early American History Tags: 18th Century, African-American history, Digital History, Lafayette, Maritime history, New-York Historical Society, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Public History, Publishing, religious history, Slavery Leave a comment

TWEAH Welcome to another addition of The Week in Early American History! Continue reading →

On Remembrance and Resurrection: Commemorating Portsmouth’s (NH) African Burying Ground

June 1, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Public History Tags: 18th Century, African Burying Ground, African-American history, Civil Rights, New Hampshire, Portsmouth, Public History 8 Comments

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A horse-drawn wagon, bearing coffins holding the remains of the Portsmouth Africans.

“I am the resurrection and the life.” From John 11:25 comes this Bible passage describing Lazarus’s miraculous rise from the death, as he addressed Martha, the sister of Lazarus. For Christians, this lesson is supposed to demonstrate that death is no obstacle to Jesus. This passage figured prominently into Igbo healer Chief Oscar Mokeme’s commemoration of the life of Portsmouth’s Africans, which featured a syncretic blend of Igbo and Christian funeral customs. Continue reading →

The King’s Arms?

May 4, 2015 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Research Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Adams, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, british history, Civil War, George III, history culture, king's college london, military history, monarchy, museums, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Print Culture, Public History, royal, royals, sword, windsor 1 Comment

Paper soldiers on the march, and tin men tilting at swordpoint: these were the first battle ranks that Grenville Howland Norcross, aged 11 in Civil War Boston, led to glory. Between phantom invasions and replays of Antietam with “relics” received as gifts, Norcross gobbled up the military heroics popularized by the era’s dime novels. In a childhood diary that illustrates how “lowbrow” literature grabbed the imagination of a warsick homefront, Norcross chronicled his progress through the antics of Kate Sharp, Old Hal Williams, and Crazy Dan. By 1875, Norcross had outgrown his toy battalions, graduated Harvard, and stepped into a law career. An avid autograph collector, from his Commonwealth Avenue perch Norcross nurtured the city’s flourishing history culture, taking a leading role at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Bostonian Society. He rose to serve as Cabinet-Keeper for the Massachusetts Historical Society, supervising the intake and cataloguing of major collections including, by April 1920, the library of historian Henry Adams. At the Society’s next meeting, held in the midafternoon of 10 June, Grenville Norcross reported on the Cabinet’s newest curiosity, which has proven a royal mystery ever since:

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Interview: Liz Covart of Ben Franklin’s World

April 10, 2015 By Michael D. Hattem in Digital History, Interview, Interviews with Historians Tags: alt-ac, Ben Franklin's World, Digital History, Interview, Liz Covart, podcasting, Public History Leave a comment

Last week, The JuntoCasters—aka Ken Owen, Roy Rogers, and myself— appeared on the new, fast-growing podcast hosted by Liz Covart called Ben Franklin’s World, an interview-based early American history podcast that launched in October 2014. Already, the podcast has a catalogue of twenty-four episodes and a rapidly growing audience. Most episodes feature Liz interviewing a historian/author about a recent book and some of her past guests have included such notable historians as Alan Taylor, François Furstenberg, Claudio Saunt, Joyce Chaplin, and James Green, as well as The Junto’s own Sara Georgini for an episode about John and Abigail Adams and the Adams Papers. Continue reading →