On my summer vacation.....the Revolution is not inevitable

My husband and I actually went on a vacation for five days last week.  We can't usually make our schedules coincide, but mid-May worked (for the same reason it worked 10 years ago for our wedding).  Being history geeks, we spent three days at  Colonial Williamsburg.  I especially recommend the evening "gambols" at Chowing's Tavern.

Parts of the interpretation are wonderfully complex - we saw a good two-woman show about Oney Judge, who grew up as Martha Washington's slave, escaping to freedom while living at the President's House in Philadelphia.  The show did a great job of exploring Oney's choice to take uncertainty and freedom over luxury and slavery.  You can learn more about this story by visiting the President's House while we're in Philadelphia - it's adjacent to the Liberty Bell pavilion and its interpretation/recreation was a subject of much debate.

One of the interpreters, portraying the printer/publisher of one of Williamsburg's newspaper, was annoying in that he didn't do a good job of engaging people who joined the group during the conversation.  He was very good at making one point though - for this individual, it was 1774.  He could not imagine that the escalating dispute with Britain would result in violence.  In 1774, independence wasn't inevitable. 

It's sometimes hard to remember that history is a series of choices - a choose your own adventure.  At any point, a different choice could have been made.  The constructs of time travel and parallel universes in science fiction often make my head hurt, but there's an interesting idea that we have to remember - every decision is a choice.  I don't know if they lead to the creation of a parallel universes, but it while it is inevitable that there will be a future, what that future is will be the results of many choices yet to be made.

So how can you make history surprising again?

History Day(s)

I hope everyone enjoyed the Library of Congress workshop on the 2nd!  It was great to meet this year's teachers and I look forward to getting to know you better.  In June, you'll have the chance to discover resources in the Pennsylvania State Archives, State Museum of Pennsylvania, and the National Archives (at its Philadelphia location and online).

I spent much of Friday and Saturday judging at the National History Day in Pennsylvania contest.  Crazy as work and grad school is, I do my best to take time to judge.  This year I'll have covered all four levels - a local school contest, regional, state and national.  I get inspired every year by seeing the enthusiasm of all these students for history.

This year's NHD theme is "Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History".  Students don't have to connect to all of them, but do need to make a connection to some part of the theme.  It's always interesting to see how they do that.  Just to name a few topics I've seen this year - the birth control pill as revolution; Henry Ford's industrial revolution in creating the moving assembly line; Martin Luther, Prohibition, Tianamen Square, the 1971 Titans football team from Alexandria VA; the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society; Kent State; the Christiana Riots; Title IX.  It was wonderful that there was no overwhelming trend in topics this year (after the year where I judged 7 documentaries on the Navajo Code Talkers). 

It also shows that there are interesting stories everywhere.  We've done a better job in the last 30 years of acknowledging that history isn't about dead, often rich, white men.  We still have work to do to make sure that history is about all people, rather than relegating women, people of color, servants, and others to sidebars. 

While the focus of this year's program is the American Revolution and Constitution period, I think we'll be able to dig around a bit to find the people behind the men in Philadelphia and Valley Forge!

Catching up....

I'm behind.  I'll admit it.  I've spent part of this morning catching up on the April activities.  I wasn't surprised to find that I'm 60% left-brain, 40% right-brain.  I will dispute the idea that I'm not verbal (this finding would shock my husband as well) - I didn't feel like the test differentiated verbal from aural.  I use words, a lot.  I'll write directions rather than draw them.  I don't process well aurally, however - I need visual anchors, but they can be words.

I think I can illustrate this by following up on my post about going to the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in  mid-April.  It was a lot of fun, though 4 days away put me really behind.  I enjoyed being in Boston right before Patriots' Day and the Boston Marathon, watching more runners arrive every day.  George Takei was an amazing featured speaker.  He covered a broad range of topics from his experience being interned with his family during World War II as a Japanese-American, to being an Asian actor and the stereotypes that can ensue, to his current work in the fight for marriage equality.

Being an academic conference, presenters generally read their papers.  I hate this.  I actually prefer when the presenter uses a powerpoint, as long as they don't then read the powerpoint!  A powerpoint slide with 2-3 main points gives me something to process visually, which then gives me anchors for the information which I'm receiving aurally.  Plus - it's a conference about popular culture; how can you not have visuals!

Several of you commented about how you didn't like history in school - all those dates and facts.  While we're focusing on the American Revolution and US Constitution - since our project is funded by a Teaching American History grant that is supposed to focus on "traditional" American history (a subject of much debate over the 10 years of the grant program's history) - history as a field is much broader.

A number of the presenters were from fields like English (I have no idea what "translation studies" is, when it's in an English department!) but some were from history.  One colleague from Penn State Harrisburg's American Studies program presented an interesting talk about Milton Hershey's use of advertising images, including a baby in a cocoa bean image that I don't remember ever seeing. 

I went to an interesting session about Civil War reenactors.  One presenter talked about how all of the reenactors that he interviewed said they became interested in the Civil War after reading Bruce Catton's illustrated history of the Civil War which was published in the 1960s.  The speaker then looked at how the reenactors' view of the Civil War matches up with the view presented by Catton, rather than the different views presented by history scholars.

Being a pop culture conference, I did also go to sessions about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dr. Who," as well as children's literature, popular romances, and all sorts of other things.  I did find one other person whose work intersects my grad work - she turned me on to a whole other community of quilters, the Modern Quilt Guild, that I didn't know about.  I have lots of ideas that I wish I had time to pursue!

I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!  By then, hopefully I'll have submitted my final paper for the semester so will be able to enjoy a month off before my summer session class really kicks in at the end of May.

PS - it's May Day - one the one hand, a signficant holiday in labor history.  On the other hand, at my undergraduate alma mater it was also a celebration of the end of the semester.  There will be lots of references to strawberries and cream, bread and roses on my Facebook feed today.