"Our revels now are ended:" Looking Back on the Semester

As the semester draws to a close, it only seems fitting to look back on what I've learned. And there is so much to cover.

At the beginning of the semester, I came into my historical methods class not knowing what to expect. And now, I've realized, that was probably a good thing, because no expectation could have been equal to what I learned.

We started out discussing historiography, and what makes a historian who they are. And suddenly, I was able to say with confidence, Yes, I know what I'm going to do when I receive my degree, I can say what a historian does (although there are still plenty of jokes about history majors and historians out there that still make me laugh and sigh in recognition).

Sadly, it does seem sometimes that I'm swimming in papers...

We discussed primary documents and secondary documents, and read Mickey Mouse History, which enlightened me as to the plight of history in America (circa 1995, of course). And then, after a brief dalliance with Turabian and learning citation format, we entered into paper writing.

I think, if there was anywhere this semester where I learned the most, it was during this phase. Once again, I have realized the benefit of taking carefully labelled notes, and taking them long before I start trying to write my rough draft. I also learned to skim my sources' bibliographies, looking for sources that come highly recommended or that are repeated (since they're typically the major sources on the topic). Most of all, I learned to do my best to avoid bias while writing, avoiding formulating my thesis until after my research is completed.

But I learned more than just the nuts and bolts of writing a paper. I also began to view the Lincoln assassination from another viewpoint - that of Mary Surratt. Previously, I had only seen it from the perspective of an outsider looking in. I had always looked at everything that happened as bad - that John Wilkes Booth was an evil mastermind, that Lincoln was a martyr, that Surratt, while most likely innocent, was guilty by association. And, by looking at the evidence again - by actually sitting down and sifting through it - my views have been reopened. While Booth might not be the evil mastermind I thought he was and Lincoln may not be a martyr, Surratt still remains somewhat of a conundrum for me. Her possible guilt/possible innocence has made me only that much more interested in the Lincoln assassination, and rekindled my love for the Civil War.

Finally, I couldn't have made it through the semester without the amazing support of my classmates. Everyone in the class was so helpful and supportive that it gave the class a welcoming atmosphere. Even on the days where I didn't feel like I could deal with dragging myself to classes, I was always excited to see my classmates, and they definitely made the class what it was.

If anything can be said for this semester, it can be said that it has reminded me why I'm doing what I'm doing, and confirmed that, if there was any doubt that I wanted to work in history, it is gone.

Thank you for a wonderful semester. I look forward to sharing the next semester, and the next, and the next.

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it shall inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."

 - William Shakespeare, The Tempest Act IV, Scene I

Between the Acts

As I mentioned previously, I just wrapped up a production of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The play tells the story of William Shakespeare's classic tragedy Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, who are Hamlet's close friends. Throughout the show, the two attempt to understand why they have been summoned to Elsinore, and ask questions about life, death, and Fate.

Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as the title characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990)

And, this week, in one of my English classes, we have begun discussing Virginia Woolf's final novel, Between the Acts (hence the title of the post). And I cannot help but feel like there is a certain poetry to these two events coming so close to each other. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is an actor-driven play - the two leads are on stage for the entirety of the show (with the exception of intermission - otherwise, I think my costar and I would have pulled a Hamlet and gone insane!), and never stop talking. But each audience member gets something different out of the show. Because the show is heavily existentialist (the characters always lose track of how they came in, and so they cannot go off, for example), people who connect to that philosophical school are bound to pull different ideas from it than people who are unfamiliar with the thoughts of Sartre and Camus. Audience members who are unfamiliar with Hamlet likewise discover different things in the text. For me, having lived in Rosencrantz's shoes for almost three months, I think that what I found in the play was the idea that even the most innocent-seeming men and women can have the deepest thoughts. It is Rosencrantz who delivers one of the most powerful speeches (in my opinion) - on the nature of death. But he cannot hold onto the idea - he laughs it off, and then becomes infuriated by the events surrounding him.

This idea of audience interaction is one of the major themes that we are discussing as a class with Between the Acts. One of the actors who worked with me on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is in the class with me, and we are both excited to see where Woolf takes this idea in the novel. I greatly believe in the idea that each audience member takes their own interpretation as they leave (its the same thing that happens with books or movies), and I can't wait to see what happens for the characters in Between the Acts!

Finding the Right Sources

Finding sources for Mary Surratt has been easy. Finding time to read through them this week, not so much.

This week has been one of the most stressful of my life. I have been working on the fall play (I was cast as Rosencrantz in the school production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), and the show has taken over my life. Finding time to sit down and read through my sources for this paper (or any of the papers that I'm supposed to be writing right now - I have five on the docket) has been nigh on impossible.

That being said, I have flipped through all my sources at least once, so I have a vague idea of what sources will be useful to me.

My idea of what I want to write on, at the moment, is this: Mary Surratt was innocent of plotting to kill Abraham Lincoln. While she might have known about the prior plot to kidnap the president and hold him for ransom, that has no bearing on what she was tried for. Therefore, I only wish to examine her innocence for the charges placed against her: conspiring to assassinate the President of the United States.

As far as primary documents go, the trial transcripts are my best source of information. However, all of the documents are kept on microfiche at the National Archives and are very difficult to obtain. Therefore, I am mostly able to find them through secondary sources, such as Theodore Roscoe's The Web of Conspiracy, which devotes multiple pages solely to reprinting the testimony of Surratt and other witnesses. The other primary sources that I think might be helpful are newspapers. James L. Swanson and Daniel R. Weinberg's Lincoln's Assassins is complete with full-color photographs of many of the primary documents of the time period, which I would not have been able to obtain otherwise.

As for secondary documents, the two that I think will end up being the most helpful to me are the two biographies of Surratt: Elizabeth Steger Trindall's Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy, and Kate Clifford Larson's The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. Trindall argues for Surratt's innocence, while Larson argues for her guilt, so it will be interesting to see both sides of the argument. I also look forward to reading through Louis Weichmann's book on the trial and conspiracy, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865. Because Weichmann was the leading witness against Surratt at her trial, it will be valuable to see his testimony as he has written it.

As I have suspected from day one, James L. Swanson's Manhunt has been an invaluable resource to me, providing me with one of the most well-organized bibliographies I have ever seen and helping me to organize my timeline of the assassination, arrests, and trial. I owe Swanson a great debt - not only for sparking my original interest in the assassination, but providing such a well-structured understanding of it as well.

I look forward to being able to interact more with my sources this week and next. The play is finally wrapping tomorrow night (I'm both sad and happy about this - as I am about most things coming to an end), but the good thing is that I will finally have time to get some hardcore research done!

Coming to a Point: Figuring Out a Thesis

There are multiple ways to formulate a thesis, and every writer has his or her personal favorite method. In the past, I've used two different methods to come to a specific idea.

When I write papers, I typically sit down and begin typing. I don't sit down and think out what I want to say beforehand in an outline - I simply begin formatting my argument, and edit as I go, and after I finish. Before I begin writing my paper, I take a good look at the question being asked, and think about how I want to approach it. For example, I might be writing about women's roles in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse as compared to those in E.M. Forster's Howards End. I would then, after some contemplation on which characters I might want to focus on (in this example, I would automatically pull out Margaret and Helen Schlegel and Mrs. Wilcox from Howards End and Lily Briscoe, Mrs. Ramsay, and Minta Rawley from To the Lighthouse as characters to spend time writing on), and then begin writing. I typically write a working thesis for these papers, changing it as my argument changes. Most of the time, I might begin with a thesis that says something like, "While Forster appears to show that women's role is in the house as part of a marital partnership, Woolf's novel gives the appearance of women having a greater freedom in their choices." However, as I write, my thoughts might change, and by the end of my edits, my final thesis might say, "Although both Forster and Woolf portray marriages in their novels as womanly roles, Forster portrays it as a woman's only option due to societal influences, while Woolf portrays it as a conscious choice made by some women, and not an act forced upon them." The benefit of writing a paper with a fluid thesis is that, while I may have a general idea of what I want to talk about in my paper (in this example, I want to focus on the role of marriage in women's lives in the two novels), I might not have completely fleshed this idea out yet in my head. Writing everything out and then going back to fix my thesis allows me to write down the general idea of what I want to say first, and then go back and make it more specific later.

I would also like to add that I typically only do this with English papers, where I am working with novels whose general plots I am familiar with. I write history papers in a much different manner.

For a history term paper, such as the one I completed last semester for my class on Absolutism and Enlightenment, I began in a different manner. First, I wrote my topic down on a sticky note and stuck it on the wall in a place where I could see it as I wrote and did other class work. As I had ideas, I would add other sticky notes to the wall. Eventually, I focused on one topic that I found most interesting: the role of the maîtresse-en-titre at the Versailles of Louis XIV. That led me to my research, where I began with general information about the court life of Versailles, and then more detailed research on the three main mistresses of Louis XIV. This in turn helped me to solidify my thesis: the maîtresse-en-titre were able to influence aspects of life at Versailles by rising above etiquette. I was then able to format an outline and argument for the paper, focusing specifically on Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV's main mistress, and her role as the life of the court party, in contrast with his morganatic wife, Madame de Maintenon, whose religious faith put a damper on court life. Here, setting a thesis only works after research is completed, in order to not bias the information gathered. A fluid thesis, like the method I use for my English papers, doesn't really work here, mainly because once I know what I want to say, it can't change much, in case I go against my evidence. Rewording the thesis will always happen in the editing process - choosing better words is always a plus - but completely reformatting the thesis because I began arguing something else is probably a bad idea.

Overall, the main difference between my two thesis methods is the amount of research I do. For history papers: research, research, research. For English: pour my brain onto the page, and then edit, edit, edit.

The Conspirator: Hollywood's Take on the Mary Surratt Trial

This weekend, I watched The Conspirator again for the first time since I began working on my research for my paper. Because it is a Hollywood film, I did take everything it said with a grain of salt, but - that being said - I still managed to find some interesting details that might help me in researching and writing my essay.

Most of these were names. I discovered the names of Mary's lawyers, Frederick Aiken (her defense attorney) and Reverdy Johnson (the man in charge of her case). Johnson was actually a senator from Maryland, and, according to the film (something that I might have to look up to verify) refused to be her defense attorney because he believed that his being a "Southerner" would harm her verdict.

Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) and Sen. Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson)

Other names that I found helpful were Louis Payne, Lewis Weichmann, and John and Anna Surratt. Payne's last name was actually an alias - his real name, Powell, was unknown during the trials. His actions form one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Mary. He appeared at her home during the middle of the night, claiming to have been asked to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt. She claimed not to know him. Lewis Weichmann provided the main testimony against Mary at her trial, accusing her of being the mother of the plot. His book on the assassination and trial is already on my list of sources, and one that our library conveniently had a copy of. Finally, John and Anna Surratt were Mary's two children. John was definitely close to John Wilkes Booth - during the movie, Aiken calls him "Booth's right hand." Not long before the assassination, John left for Canada, leaving his mother to be snapped up by the government. His sister Anna was placed under protective custody by the government (at least, that's what it seemed like - it might have been house arrest, but the film was rather vague on this point). She gave evidence at the trial, and, from the movie's perspective, was madly infatuated with John Wilkes Booth. The research on these names should hopefully provide me with more information about what happened at the trial.

The film opened my eyes to a number of possibilities to narrow my focus even further - the deplorable conditions, for example, or the trial by military tribunal instead of civilian court. I think what this film has shown me, however, is the qualifications around Mary Surratt's guilt and innocence. While I believe she is innocent, so many others believe she is not. The testimony (at least from the film's perspective) seemed skewed in the government's favor, and the trial seemed to be a sham in order to find someone in the weeks after Lincoln's death to blame. 

I really enjoyed re-watching The Conspirator - it has definitely given me something to think about. 

Robin Wright as Mary Surratt in The Conspirator

The Conspirator is available for purchase on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. It is also available to play and rent on Netflix and Amazon Prime as of this posting. 

The Problem of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is bad.

That seems like a really obvious thing to say, but it is.

Plagiarism still happens.

That is a really sad thing to write, but it's still true.

Plagiarism is something that plays a large part in my life. As a History and English double major, I have to be even more careful than the average student in making sure that everything I write has been checked, double checked, and often triple checked for citation accuracy. Fear of plagiarism can keep me up at night sometimes, especially when I have multiple papers going at the same time.

Plagiarism is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "the act of using another person's words or ideas without giving credit to that person." This may seem easy to avoid, and, most of the time, it is.

Just last week, I received a lecture about plagiarism in one of my classes. My French Revolution professor handed out a sheet on plagiarism, informing us about her past experiences with plagiarism in papers as a professor. In order to prevent them from happening again, she hands out information on it and discusses it for a lengthy amount of time in class. We have to sign a sheet testifying that we have learned what plagiarism is and hand it in the day of the lecture. When we turn in our final drafts, we have to turn in an additional sheet, with our signatures, our paper titles, and the date, acknowledging, once again, that we understand that, if we have plagiarized any of the papers, at least we know what we have done.

We don't take plagiarism as a joke. (I would like to point out here that my professor did mention - in jest, mind you - that we sign our contracts in blood, and then followed up the plagiarism discussion with a documentary on the history of the guillotine. It is a class on the French Revolution, after all).

It can be easily avoided, though.

A handy rule of thumb which has saved me many times: when in doubt, cite it. Better to over cite, and cite something that didn't need citations, than to not cite it, and be pulled before a board or lose your place at the school for plagiarism.

Most things that are common knowledge do not need to be cited. That typically applies to names, dates, locations - that sort of thing. But if you only find it in one source, or if you're paraphrasing or taking a direct quote from an author, then it definitely has to be cited. This is the Purdue OWL's guide to avoiding plagiarism, which most likely explains the rules better than I ever could.

The Conspirator: Hollywood's Take on the Mary Surratt Trial

As I was doing research this weekend, I discovered (or, I should say, rediscovered) this movie. It's called The Conspirator, and came out just before Lincoln did. It covers the trial of Mary Surratt, from the point of view of her lawyer, Frederick Aiken. I haven't seen this since it was released, but from what I remember, it was a really well done film. I plan to watch it again at some point, either during my research or after this semester, to see how much of the trial they actually got right. The video above is for the trailer. You can watch the film through Netflix, Amazon Prime, or on DVD.

Choosing and Researching: Beginning the Term Paper

Today in class, our professor told us to choose a topic for our term paper from any time period in American history, and then blog about our topic and research ideas for it.

That threw me for a loop.

If you've read my About Me, you know that most of the things that I tend to study and read about for fun in history are European history - in fact, at this same moment, I am researching and writing a term paper for a class on the French Revolution, which is what I would like to specialize in during graduate school. Choosing that particular topic was relatively easy - I was able to come up with a couple of topics and wound up choosing the political fashions of Marie Antoinette and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. They will probably turn up multiple times during my discussion of term paper research throughout the process, as I wind up doing research for both papers.

Lady Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire - Thomas Gainsborough

Because of my personal love of European history, focusing on a topic in American history is difficult. I enjoy studying the Civil War, so my first thought was perhaps studying the battles near my hometown, or the battle within my hometown. However, after thinking it over, I realized that not only is there way too much information on these battles, but that it would be difficult to get hold of in time for turning in my bibliography. My next thought was a president, or perhaps American spycraft. Spycraft seems to be a little too difficult to find sources on - while it is a fascinating topic, most of the spying that I am interested in is done within the context of European history. So that left a president.

My two all-time favorite presidents are Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. So, I quickly narrowed my possible topics down to the two of them. I asked myself what it was about the two of them that fascinated me so much - why Jefferson? Why Lincoln?

Thomas Jefferson - Third President of the United States and Most Adorable Nerd

What attracted me to Jefferson, I decided, was his ability to be an awkward nerd about life, and still be a genius. One of my favorite stories about him was that, as a student, he asked a girl out courting and, after she rejected him, suffered a headache for a day from embarrassment. I'm also fascinated by his wine collection and his time in France - why, out of all of the Founding Fathers, was it Jefferson who absorbed so much of French culture and characteristics? This seems especially interesting to me since his presidency is so intertwined with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, one of the most rough and tumble events in early America. I also love Monticello, Jefferson's house in Virginia - I've visited twice, and every time I enter I'm filled with greater respect for a man who was a genius ahead of his time, and yet also trapped within social conventions that he felt he could not escape.

Abraham Lincoln - The Glue that Held the Union Together

What I find most fascinating about Abraham Lincoln is his role in the Civil War. I suppose (if I'm being completely honest) what I'm really fascinated by is his assassination. I conveniently already have a source for a paper on the Lincoln assassination in my dorm room with me: James Swanson's Manhunt, a book that I found fascinating the first time I read it, and continue to find fascinating.

After a long train of thought, I decided that my topic would be the Lincoln assassination, the chase for the assassins, and their trials and executions - a topic that, if necessary, I shrink after talking with my professor.

Then it came time to look at what I needed to do for research. The previous semester, I wrote a term paper on the influence of the mistress on court life at Louis XIV's Versailles, so I am very familiar with our ILL (interlibrary loan) system. I decided that the best course of action would be to turn to Swanson and see what he had listed in his bibliography, and see how many of those books were available at Spring Hill. After that, I could start looking for ebooks through my public library back home, primary sources through the National Archives, and maybe even microfiche newspaper announcements in the archives at nearby universities. A biography of the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, might not be a bad place to start, in order to gain an understanding of his actions. This might be where I start this weekend. 

But first, I think I'll go back to the beginning - time to reread Manhunt. I'm looking forward to research!

Manhunt cover art - my first source for my paper! 

UPDATE: After discussion with my professor, I have narrowed my topic down to Mary Surratt, her involvement in the plot, and he subsequent trial. Surratt was the only woman tried among the conspirators, and was executed along with them for supposedly aiding and abetting John Wilkes Booth in his plot to assassinate the president. I have never found the evidence against Surratt very convincing, however - in fact, I have always felt that the military tribunal that tried the conspirators was attempting to try Booth in absentia through the figures of the conspirators,  since Boston Corbett had killed Booth before he could be tried. I think of all the figures, Surratt's trial is the most fascinating, and I look forward eagerly to diving into my research!

Preparing to Debate: Researching the History of the Cold War

This past week, I was assigned a debate project, along with two of my classmates, to argue that the policies used by the United States during the Cold War "promulgated and extended" it. Not only are we supposed to prepare for an intense, in-class debate (which might possibly take place in front of other professors - from our department, as well as others), we are supposed to blog about our preparation and research for the debate, as well.

This is my attempt to summarize my research process. My research methods may be unusual, so feel free to ask me questions in the comments.

You can find my companions' research here, at Maggie's and TJ's blogs.

Cold War Political Cartoon

Before I began researching, I knew the basic schematic of the Cold War. It began almost as soon as the Second World War ended in 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman and Stalin had had a rocky relationship at Potsdam, due to Stalin's attempts to subtly (not really, but that's what he thought) gain power, and Truman's recognition of his efforts. The Marshall Plan went into effect, helping to revitalize Europe's economy. Aid was promised to all European countries devastated by the war - however, those now occupied by Soviet troops were forced to refuse the aid. Americans suddenly adopted a policy of containment - to keep communism from spreading anywhere it wasn't already present - outlined for them in the Truman Doctrine. Truman then sent aid to Greeks fighting against communism in the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s,  as a measure to prove his commitment to the Truman Doctrine. And then, in the 1950s, Truman decided to back the South Koreans in their war for independence.

The Korean War was fought against the North Koreans, who were Communist and backed by the Chinese. China had undergone a brief revolution itself, and was now, under Chairman Mao, a Communist regime (although, due to ideological differences with Stalin, not the same type of communism as the Soviet Union - in fact, due to these differences in interpretation, Stalin and Mao did not get along very well). General Douglas MacArthur was placed at the head of the army during the Korean War, and all seemed well - in fact, the Americans and South Koreans passed the 58th Parallel and invaded North Korea - until MacArthur decided that he wanted to invade China as well. This did not bode well with the Chinese or Truman, who sacked MacArthur and installed a new general, who was then overwhelmed by the combination of Chinese and North Korean forces and sought a stalemate.

Not long after this, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred; followed, not long after, by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as he rode through Dallas, Texas, during his campaign for reelection. Americans were panicked, especially when they learned that the assassin was a former resident of the Soviet Union, and had, in fact, married a Soviet citizen. It was up to Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's vice president and now president of the United States, to come up with a plan.

What he wound up doing was involving the United States in one of the most unpopular, most deadly wars in its history: Vietnam.

Like Korea, Vietnam was fought against a communist government within North Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, and their allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong. The South Vietnamese wanted to maintain ties with Western countries, while North Vietnam wanted to unify the peninsula after colonial forces had been removed. Americans had actually been in Vietnam since the 1950s, slowly growing in number throughout the 1960s. Vietnam became a grossly unpopular war in the United States, with taunts being shouted at the president from the public outside the White House. It led to Johnson failing to win reelection, and to the presidency to Richard Nixon - because Nixon claimed to have a secret plan to win the war.

While Nixon did end Vietnam, pulling Americans out by 1972, his main contribution to the Cold War was his policy of detente. Detente was a brilliant plan - it played the Soviet Union and China's massive dislike of the other against them, allowing America to gain policies that it needed. It was a genius political move. 

After Watergate kicked Nixon out of the White House, and Ford had left, Jimmy Carter became president. His main Cold War issue was Iran - their kidnapping of hundreds of American hostages became the main focus of his last days in office. He also decided to boycott the 1980 Olympics, because of their presence in Soviet Russia. 

His successor, Ronald Reagan, did the most to bring about the end of the Cold War. He began an arms race between the two countries to cause the Soviet Union to run out of money. He also began a talk with Mikhail Gorbachev to see if the two countries could come to an agreement to end the Cold War. Before Reagan could complete his goals, his two terms ended, and his former vice president, George Bush, was elected president. In 1991, Soviet Russia fell, along with the Berlin Wall, which had divided East (Soviet-held) Berlin from West (American-held) Berlin since the end of World War II. It was the dawn of a new era.

Based on my prior knowledge, then, it would seem that both sides were at fault for the Cold War starting - mainly because of Stalin being Stalin, and Truman recognizing that fact, but not really being good at calling him on it. From that point on, it seems as if America did, in fact, do most of the actual fighting - whether it was actual fighting, as in Korea or Vietnam, or whether it was political, such as Nixon's policy of detente or Reagan's arms race. 

My goal for researching, then, would be to look at those points in time, and see whether or not the Russians and Americans ever both pushed for policies to "promulgate and extend" the Cold War.

My first instinct was to ask my father, who had studied Soviet policy in college, whether he had any suggestions as to places where I could look for more information. He was rather unhelpful, telling me  that he had only lived through the Cold War, and had no suggestions for me. So I then turned to the Spring Hill Library.

Our library is smaller than most, seeing as our school is a small school, but I did manage to find some interesting books on the topic. Our professor had posted several books to get us started, but I managed to find only one on the shelved, John Spanier's American Foreign Policy Since World War II. I also picked up a book titled Victims of Groupthink, written by Irving C. Janis, and A Journey Through the Cold War, by Raymond R. Garthoff. Although I did not pull it from the shelves, I did see a book titled Bears in the Caviar, which made me smile.

Spanier's book helped to clarify why the United States reacted as it did to the sudden appearance of communism in China, an event which has always seemed somewhat mysterious to me. Spanier notes that Americans had always considered China their pet project in Asia, going back as far as the Open Door Policy at the end of the 19th century. However, they had never really expected to have to defend the country that they were lauding heavily as a commercial market for American goods, and were shocked by the collapse of the Chinese government. It also came at the same time as the discovery of the traitorous work done by Alger Hiss, a member of the government who had passed information to the Soviet Union, and the detonation of the USSR's first atomic bomb. The fear of communism that all of these events at once combined to create was only compounded by the Korean War and China's intervention. So far, I think this has been the best source that I've found on the topic.

A brief glance through the preface of Victims of Groupthink suggested that it would focus on the psychological reasoning behind the political decisions made, especially when looking at the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Marshall Plan, and the escalation of the Vietnam War (all of which are dealt with as topics within the book). Janis makes it clear that the book's purpose is "to increase awareness of social psychological phenomena in decisions of historic importance" (Janis v). It seems like it could be a credible source for the debate, but it has also left me wondering why it was shelved in the history section, and not under psychology.

Garthoff's book, upon closer reading, turned out to be a memoir of his life through the Cold War. I'm a little wary of a memoir, especially for a debate, since it is such a polarizing topic, and the lens of personal beliefs might cloud the author's judgement. However, Garthoff's preface discusses his service in the CIA and under the governments of both Kennedy and Johnson, so it might prove a viable source. 

At this point, I continue to research (I hope to find more information through primary sources at the National Archives and other web sources) and to prepare for the debate on Wednesday. My group and I are meeting tomorrow to discuss what we've found and where we want to go with the debate. I look forward to hearing what they've found!

"Mickey Mouse" History: How Disney Parks Portray the Past

Pretty much everyone I knew growing up had been to a Disney Park. It was either Disney World or Disneyland (or, if you were one of the lucky ones, both of them) or EPCOT, which, for kids my age, was not nearly as cool as the princesses and princes at the Magic Kingdom. Growing up, though, we never recognized that Disney was attempting to show us history. 

My parents, on the other hand, remember Disney in a much different fashion. They remember Disney films on everything from history to biology being shown in classrooms in their middle schools and high schools. Disney's attempts to educate were much more obvious then.

Now, however, it is much different. My generation did not grow up watching educational films on America created by Walt Disney and his corp of Imagineers; instead, we grew up on Disney's animated princes and princesses and his marvelous theme parks. These theme parks were Walt Disney's way to reinterpret history as he wanted to see it. 

There is an important distinction that should be made before I continue this post. There are two Walt Disneys, according to Mike Wallace's Mickey Mouse History: Original Walt, who is Walt Disney himself, and Corporate Walt, who is the WED Enterprises, Inc. Corporate Walt took over for Original Walt after Disney's death in 1966, and has operated ever since. 

It was Original Walt who conceived the idea for the Disney Parks in California and, later, Florida. He  created a place which was "clean, wholesome, and altogether different from the seedy carnivals he remembered from his youth" (Wallace 135). Here, Disney built his own version of history, starting with Main Street, the first place visitors come to when entering a Disney Park. 

Main Street, USA at Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida

"It is a happy street," writes Wallace, "clean and tidy, filled with prancing Disney characters. It has a toylike quality...It is like playing in a walk-in doll's house that is simultaneously a shopper's paradise, equipped with dozens of little old-time shops with corporate logos tastefully affixed" (135-6). Supposedly, Main Street is based on the main street of Disney's childhood hometown of Marceline, Missouri; looking at Disney's actual life history (a childhood of displacement and perambulation across America) shows this to be false. Instead, Wallace points out, Main Street, USA, is Disney's idea of what Main Street should be like. "Original Walt's approach to the past," Wallace writes, "was thus not to reproduce it, but to improve it [author's italics]" (136). Imagineers call this "Disney Realism," "where we carefully program out all the negative, unwanted elements and program in the positive elements" (Wallace 137). 

Disney also embraced this perfected view of history in the Hall of Presidents. A brief video elaborating on the Constitution and the threats it had faced in the past is followed by a display of animatronic presidents, moving and talking about their presidencies. 

The Hall of Presidents

Wallace points out that each president is portrayed with a degree of detail "characteristic of Hollywood costume dramas" (139). The audience is held in rapt attention by the presidents, occasionally whispering as famous names are mentioned. When Nixon is spotlighted, however, "chortles and guffaws break out" because, as Wallace notes, "The contrast between the official history and living memories is too great...and the spell snaps under the strain." Wallace, after leaving the show, asked a worker if it had just been a bad day for Nixon, and was told in reply "that no, the crowd always rumbles when RN takes a bow" (139). 

This problem of connection between past and present led to Corporate Walt's creation in 1982 of EPCOT and its American Adventure. 

The American Adventure, EPCOT

The American Adventure departs from the history portrayed at the Magic Kingdom in that it includes African-Americans, women, and Native Americans. It follows American history, as narrated by (animatronic) Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin, covering everything from the American Revolution to the lunar landing. Despite including groups that had been excluded or portrayed in an unflattering light in the Magic Kingdom, it still glosses over the parts of history that Corporate Disney found distasteful, including the complete elimination of the Vietnam War and the fights for union rights. While it is a step in the right direction, it still holds back.

What Disney history (or, as Wallace terms it, "Mickey Mouse" history) reveals is the desire to teach while entertaining, and improve while appearing to teach the truth. This is similar to what happened in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, as America struggled to find a true national heritage. By creating his own version of America, Disney commodified American history, turning it into something that could be bought and sold. It becomes an idea to be passed on to future generations - an idealization, instead of the actuality. 

What Disney promotes is a perfected idea of the past - a glossy magazine cover, with no problems, no ills, no issues of race or gender. It's a beautiful dream, but it remains just that - a perfected dream. 

The Kennedy Assassination: A Continuing Controversy

The Kennedys were America's glamorous First Family. They were peace and stability. They were culture and couture. They were happy and young. 

That all changed on November 22, 1963.

This is what the record says:

John F. Kennedy, his wife, Jacqueline, the governor of Texas, John D. Connally, and his wife, Nellie, were in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. Kennedy was campaigning for a second term as president, and had made a speech in Fort Worth earlier that morning. The top of the car was left down because of the weather. The route stretched through the center of downtown, towards a site where the president was scheduled to make a second speech that afternoon. 

At 12:30, the presidential motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. Gunshots were heard as the vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository. Kennedy and Connally were both hit, Kennedy falling onto his wife. 

The car sped to the nearest hospital, Parkland Memorial, where the president was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM. 

Not long after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination attempt. As he was being transferred two days later, on November 24, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby on national television. 

The case seems cut and dry. But because of Oswald's death, the assassination has been surrounded with controversy and mystery since the 1960s. 

Because Kennedy had been such a significant presence in American lives, the people demanded an explanation for this seemingly random act of violence. President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission to study the events surrounding the president's death, and to discern a conclusion for the events. The Warren Commission's lengthy report (the complete report has been digitized by the National Archives, and can be read here) stated that the shots which killed the president came from the Texas School Book Depository and that they were fired by Oswald. They also determined that Oswald and Jack Ruby acted alone, and not as part of a conspiracy. 

Despite its attempts to help calm Americans, who were panicked by the loss of their leader as well as the now-encroaching war in Vietnam, the Warren Commission only fueled the fire. More and more Americans tried to find an answer that they believed the government had failed to provide. They turned, inevitably, to conspiracy.

Theories began to abound (and still do today). The most popular theories today are the Grassy Knoll and the Magic Bullet. 

The Grassy Knoll theory says that a second shooter was on the Grassy Knoll behind the presidential motorcade, and fired on the president. The theorists who cling to this idea base it mainly on eyewitness testimony. 

The Magic Bullet theory is an attempt to contradict the Warren Commission's assertion that a single bullet struck both the president and the governor. It posits all sorts of contortions that the bullet had to have done in midair in order to "magically" (hence the name of the theory) hit both men. 

The Magic Bullet Theory

Both of these theories have been rigorously attacked by historians who follow the Warren Commission's report. Called lone gunman theorists, these historians attempt to present the basic facts in order to counteract the manipulation of information often used by the conspiracy theorists. 

Despite decades of investigation, the Kennedy assassination continues to draw controversy. Every year at the anniversary of the assassination, a slew of new books are published on the topic, from both viewpoints. But the topic continues to draw interest (and, thus, controversy) because of the Kennedy aura. The tragedy and the beauty of the Kennedy family certainly once drew me to learn more and form my own opinion. The case will most likely continue to draw criticism and interest for generations to come.

If you are interested in learning more about the assassination, these websites were invaluable:

The Kennedy Assassination - covers all aspects of each of the conspiracy theories (including those not mentioned on this post) and attempts to debunk them using historical evidence

The Warren Commission - already linked to previously, this goes into painstaking detail about what happened, when, where, and, when it can be interpreted, why

The JFK Presidential Library - gives a brief synopsis of the events that led up to and followed the assassination

I am also indebted to the Newseum's wonderful exhibit on the media coverage of the assassination, "Three Shots Were Fired." Sadly closed now, I was able to see the exhibit two summers ago on a trip to Washington, D.C. with my mother. It poignantly showed how the assassination touched the American public, and how it changed the face of the news media forever. 

Patriotic Correctness: The Purpose of the Public Museum

The United States is filled with museums. Some, like the Spy Museum (who I lauded heavily in my last post), are private museums, run by a board and funded by contributions from private donors. They have a greater control over what is presented in their museums - what artifacts are presented, in what order, and what story they tell.

Public museums are different. 

Public museums, such as the Smithsonian Institute, are also run by a board of directors. But the public museum relies on donations from major public sponsors and the good will of the public in order to remain open. In the case of the Smithsonian, it receives major funding from the United States government, and depends on the goodwill of Congress and the constituents to maintain its nineteen museums, national zoo, and extensive underground storage systems. 

While sites such as the Smithsonian are dependent on public good will for funding, that does not mean that they should cater to public interests and beliefs. 

Case in point:

In 1995, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum planned to display the Enola Gay for the first time, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the ending of World War II (which, coincidentally, would also be the fiftieth anniversary of the droppings of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). A detailed exhibit was planned, covering not just the bombings, but the background to the decision, its pros and cons, and the impact it had on world events. The public, specifically John T. Cornell, editor of AIR FORCE Magazine, threw a fit over the exhibit. Eventually, Congress became involved, as Newt Gingrich and other members of the Republican Party saw a way to control the way in which America was perceived. Declaring that "revisionist" historians had no place in American museums, a campaign was launched against the exhibit, which eventually led to the semi-forced retirement of the director of the Smithsonian Institute and a presentation of a much more subdued exhibit devoted solely to the Enola Gay, ignoring the bomb entirely.

Which brings me to my main point: what is the true purpose of the public museum? And should it have to conform to public desires for "patriotic correctness"?

Public museums (and all museums, to be completely honest) are made available to the public in order to give them a place to connect with the past. "At long last," writes Mike Wallace, "the American past is as crowded, diverse, contentious, and fascinating as the American present" (302). And Americans are drawn to this. In a museum, people are given the chance to see things and form their own opinions, based either on the placards or simply on their own personal knowledge, instead of being taught one person's opinion. There is a chance that they can exit the museum with a greater respect and knowledge of the past than when they entered. Public museums (and private ones, as well) do a great service here to the American people.

However, some people want to see only certain versions of history that go along with how they view events. This is where the Enola Gay exhibit comes into play. The public attempted to determine what kind of history was displayed at the Smithsonian, and, in trying to fix what was deemed too radical, the Smithsonian eventually cut out everything and left only the plane. The members of the public wanted a more "patriotic" look at the events that led up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a look that portrayed Americans as heroes and the dropping of the bombs as vital to the ending of the war. The original copy for the exhibit showed doubts about the necessity of the bomb and the heroism of Americans - in fact, it was heavily criticized (unnecessarily, upon reading in context) for favoring and victimizing the Japanese.

Should public museums become "patriotically correct" - sticking to the mythological America, where Americans are strong and brave and can do no wrong?

No. They should not.

Do they often have the liberty to do so?

No.

By becoming "patriotically correct," history loses some of the things that make it interesting - the darkness must balance out the light. Americans fought in Vietnam as well as in World War II. The Holocaust involved not just Nazi soldiers and the German people, but people in Hungary and Vichy France. The French Revolution overthrew a corrupt monarchy, but it also led to the mass executions of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed citizens.

The good has to be balanced by the bad.

By cleansing the viewpoint, we lose the balance. History becomes saccharine - sickly sweet, overly cheerful, like the Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s. The hero always triumphs. In the end, good wins out over evil, the hero can do no wrong, and all is right with the world. But that is not how history works.

Men who seemed to be able to only do good turn out to be maniacally evil. The best laid plans turn out to have catastrophic consequences. Nothing is as it seems on the surface.

However, public museums are often influenced (in the Smithsonian's case, threatened with a Senate hearing) by what the public wants. They do not want to offend the delicate sensitivities of the public imagination. And so they leave out the controversy. They "let the objects speak for themselves" - a tactic which works sometimes, but, on occasion, fails to incite the thought process that is so heavily sought for. In their attempts to please both sides, the message of the events - of the people who fought, the people who prayed, the people who died - is lost.

Public museums are national treasures, and should be treated as such. But they should also be allowed the freedom to interpret events that is given to private museums. Public museums have just as much right as private museums to accurately portray history, and, because they are visited by so many Americans, they have a duty to do so. But by listening to the cries for patriotic correctness, they fall short of their calling, and portray only a partial portrait of history.

Museums and Public History in Action

In my last post, I talked about how museums have been changing over the past century. This time, I want to show you one of my all-time favorite museums.

While we are unable to actually visit it (since flying everyone who reads this blog to Washington, D.C. is, unfortunately, outside of my budget at this point in time), we can get a pretty good look at what they offer through their website.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

The International Spy Museum

The Spy Museum - one of the coolest museums of all time

Disclaimer: This is a class assignment - I was not asked to promote the Spy Museum in any way, shape, or form. I just genuinely like the museum.

I have been to the Spy Museum twice, and I can tell you from personal experience - the museum is as cool as the website makes it out to be.

Visitors enter the museum through a windowless elevator, and are then shown a brief informational video about the world of espionage. They are then asked to choose a cover identity and maintain it for the duration of the museum - there are special interactive checkpoints where this becomes important. 

Visitors then enter the main body of the museum - a veritable wonderland of gadgets, weaponry, and memorabilia from the height of spy culture - the twentieth century. Gadgets are explained and analyzed, and techniques are demonstrated. Visitors are also given the chance to demonstrate their own spy skills, from climbing through ventilation shafts in a stealthy manner to cracking codes. 

Only a small selection of the espionage memorabilia on display

Visitors flow from the gadgets and techniques of espionage to its history, learning about its earliest years. Displays cover everything from Elizabethan master spy John Dee to the American Civil War. Special displays are set aside for the Soviet Union's KGB, World War II, and the Cold War.

A simulated spy bunker in the Cold War exhibit

The Cold War exhibit is currently not on display. Instead, it has been replaced with a temporary exhibit called Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains. The exhibit pays homage to the James Bond novels and film franchise, tracing the reality of the villains who haunt Bond's stories in the events happening in the world. While slightly more commercial than the other exhibits in the Spy Museum, it still does a great job of showing how espionage and the forces it fights are portrayed in the media.

The museum closes by ushering visitors into a small, final exhibit focusing on espionage in the twenty-first century. Here, the future of spycraft is discussed, emphasizing the possibilities of disturbances in electronic communication and how they could be used by modern spies.

As any good museum does, it then leads visitors into the gift shop (which, at the Spy Museum, is awesome - I have purchased several wonderful gifts for friends here, and personally own a t-shirt and moustache earrings). 

The museum also offers additional packages, if you are interested in continuing your visit beyond normal visiting hours. There are Interactive Spy Experiences, such as Operation Spy, that allow visitors to experience (in a less dangerous way) the life of a spy. 

If, like me, you cannot stay away, the Spy Museum has several social media accounts, which are updated on a daily basis. The Twitter and Facebook accounts both post "Today in Spy History," which is always a really interesting tidbit of history that I typically have never heard about before. 

The museum's website is key in finding all of this information before visitors arrive. One of the things that sells the Spy Museum before a visitor even arrives on the premises is the website's attention to detail - a small module on the sidebar asking for hand scan in order to access (when your mouse is held over it long enough, you can read the information beneath); a harsh black, white, and red color scheme changed only by the addition of photographs; or some quick, tiny bites of text that compel the reader to come to the museum and find out more. There is also access to the museum store, information about the extended packages, and connections to the museum's social media accounts. I greatly enjoy the site for its organization and its aesthetic - and that barely scratches the surface. 

Overall, I think this museum is one of the best that I have been to (and believe me, I have been to more museums than I can remember). I always feel welcome here, whether digitally or in person - and no matter how many times I walk in through the front doors, I am always invigorated and excited by the energy that it exudes.

And, every time I leave, I always feel compelled to remember their trademark phrase: 

DENY EVERYTHING.

The International Spy Museum is open seven days a week from 10 AM to 6 PM. It is located at 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20004.

You can follow them on Twitter at @IntlSpyMuseum, or on Facebook at International Spy Museum.

The Changing Face of the Museum

Museums are constantly changing and evolving.

Take Colonial Williamsburg, for example. The living history museum was built in the 1930s by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and represented a clean, orderly version of colonial life in Revolutionary America - a perfected portrait of Americana sans dirt, animals, and slavery. Today, it is much different. Certainly, there are no animals wandering the roads willy-nilly, but an effort has been made to incorporate the African-American story into the living history presented. It may still be slightly idealized, but it has a more balanced approach.

Colonial Williamsburg - not as idealized, but still picturesque for colonial America

Or, for a more traditional example, look no further than the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). Founded in 1923 to counteract the "old man's club" of the New York Historical Society (Wallace 35), the museum initially focused on exactly the same topics, but with more interesting displays: Dining in Old New York and Heirlooms of New Yorkers Past feature among exhibit titles from the 1940s and 1950s (Wallace 37). However, by the 1930s, the realization of its location on the fringes of high society, Harlem, and the Hispanic community forced the museum to change its exhibit focus. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a greater number of exhibits on the history of the ethnic groups surrounding the museum, but a slow draining of funds during the 1980s saw the progress gained slowly recede. As the museum dwindled, new curators arrived, with grand plans, and the museum continues to flourish, faring better in the long run than its original rival the New York Historical Society.

The Museum of the City of New York

But why have these museums (and many others across the nation - these are only two examples) changed their focus?

Because their original focus was too narrow and exclusionary.

In the case of Colonial Williamsburg, Rockefeller wished to portray the planter class of Virginia. The museum had, and still has, no visible issues: it is, as Mike Wallace points out in Mickey Mouse History, "a corporate world: Planned [sic], orderly, tidy, with no dirt, no smell, no visible signs of exploitation....The rest of the population - the 90 percent who create the wealth - are nowhere to be seen. The only whiff of conflict appears in recollections of the stirring anti-British speeches in which the founders enunciated the timeless principles since passed down..." (15). Williamsburg, in its original form, was too perfect, too idealized. It did not even attempt to touch on slavery until 1972, but remained uncomfortable discussing the relationships between blacks and whites. Because Williamsburg as a museum was built on the concept of idealizing the ideals of liberty which had motivated the founding fathers, "Admitting that the reality of exploitation contradicted the ideal of liberty was only a first step" (23).v

With the MCNY, the focus was also too narrowly classed. Many of the original donors were members of New York's elite society (the Carnegies, du Ponts, Guggenheims, and Vanderbilts were all on the original roster, to name but a few), and lent and re-borrowed their items from the museum as if it were a bank vault for temporary storage (Wallace 36-7). By the 1940s, the MCNY widened its focus to include the communities around it, beginning a lecture series that was given in Spanish (Wallace 38). It slowly incorporated the histories of the classes and people around it, and the museum became more than just a history of the glory days of Old New York. Despite the slight downturn in the 1980s due to lack of funding, the museum is coming back, returning to its focus on more than one socio-economic group.

These changes have, for the most part, been for the better. Both of these museums now include a wider perspective on the place (and, in the case of Colonial Williamsburg, the time period as well) that they cover, including the voices of men and women of different ethnic backgrounds.

However, they have also failed to change in some respects. Williamsburg still remains an idealized vision of colonial America - a clean-cut structure, where families can wander down Duke of Gloucester Street and stop in the little shops and houses along the way, eating gingerbread and drinking root beer that are made from recipes dating back to the time period. And the MCNY also struggles with retaining its image, most notably during the financial crisis of the 1980s, when it reverted to the Edith Wharton-esque portrayal of New York.

There are more museums in America (and in Mickey Mouse History, Mike Wallace's book of essays which was the basis for this post), than I can possibly blog about here. But, overall, I would like to think that the changing face of the American museum is a good thing, and, hopefully, it continues to improve, allowing for improved discussion and greater interest in historical topics. 

Why I Study History

When I came to interview at Spring Hill for scholarships, one of the questions that I was asked was, "Why do you want to be a history major?" And it stumped me - I think the answer I gave at the time was something akin to "I don't know, I just do."

But the thing is, as I've thought about it over the years, I've never once not been interested in studying the past.

As a little girl, I was always fascinated by, of all of the Disney princesses, Mulan, who was based on Chinese history and a legendary female warrior who saved China from the Huns. I watched it so many times that I broke the VHS tape and made my parents buy a new one. I read all of the Royal Diaries series, which told the stories of famous queens in history during their teenage years. These books led to my first forays into what I had previously considered the "grown-ups only" part of the library - at around ten or eleven, I started reading biographies of historical figures, such as David Starkey and Antonia Fraser's biographies of the wives of Henry VIII.

One of the many Royal Diaries books I read

In the classroom, I didn't become truly entranced by history until around fifth grade, when my teacher, Mr. Gensheimer (who just happened to also be my best friend's dad), began to make history come alive. We recreated the French and Indian War (many scalps were taken that day), and he dressed up as Alexander Hamilton in military dress and told us about the American Revolution. It was the first time that I realized that history could be more than names and dates and words on a page. He also gave me books to read outside of class, including His Excellency, George Washington (which, sadly, I never finished, due to a particularly graphic scalping sequence that was a little too much for a fifth-grade mind).

This classroom love for history continued to grow, and was aided by what happened outside as well. When I was younger, my dad traveled across the country for his job every summer, and so my mom, my brother, and I would join him, and we visited all sorts of historic sites. We visited Independence Hall and Benjamin Franklin's printing shop in Philadelphia; we toured the battlefields of Chickamauga and Chattanooga; we visited the home of the "unsinkable" Molly Brown in Denver, and learned about the mining boom; we wandered through the halls of 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu; we visited museums on the National Mall and every monument and historic home in that area that you could possibly think of. I owe a great debt to my parents for taking me to those places and encouraging me in my love of history.

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, August 2013

What really pushed me to study history was, of all things, National Treasure. The movie's treatment for history (which, I now know, can be somewhat circumspect), seemed almost reverential to me as a twelve year old, and the idea of a woman who took care of documents, was extremely intelligent, and still received respect spoke to me. I'm pretty sure that Diane Kruger's character is partially who I wanted to be growing up.

From L to R: Diane Kruger, Nicolas Cage, and Justin Bartha, National Treasure

By the time I entered high school, I knew I wanted to study history, but I wanted to be a food historian (I'm not sure where this came from, but my guess is that, because I enjoyed cooking, I wanted to study what people ate). After taking AP European History in my sophomore year, I knew that there was no way that I was only going to study food - there was just too much going on in the world to focus on only that! As high school went on, and I talked to more and more of my peers about what we wanted to study, it became firm in my mind - I wanted to study history.

I'm not sure that I have articulated well why I study history; in fact, I'm not sure that I could without babbling on for several more paragraphs. But there is a quote that I have found that expresses everything that I feel about why I study history, and I want to share it with you. It comes from a tumblr user, serazienne (you can find my link to the post here), and it reads:

Why I Study History

(OR: Why I waste time in a meaningless field; why I want to spend my life looking at old dusty letters and books; why I care about people who are dead and gone; why this even matters.)

I study history because I love humanity.

I study history because it encompasses the entire realm of human thought and deed.

History is a coded map of the human heart; it is a record of hopes and dreams, of the great and the small. History is the ambitions of humans on their knees in the mosques, the cathedrals, the temples; on the plantations; in the trenches. History is the hopes of the humans looking ahead - at the horizon, up to the stars, towards the future.

History is the action of firing a gun or swinging a sword; the action of love (making it, keeping it, using it, stealing it, forgetting it, leaving it). 

History is a Mozart symphony, a Wagnerian opera, a Gamelan opera, and the rhythm of the military march. 

History is culture, literature, philosophy; history is the smallest bedtime prayer whispered by the smallest child. It is a quest - to slay the dragon, to reclaim the Holy Land, to surpass all boundaries.

History is neither good nor evil, but it is the sum of both good and evil things. It is the wheel of time, the moving hands of a clock, and the timeless hush of an old library. History is in the museums but also in destruction of museums.

And the work of a historian is not a dead job. It is not all dust and old books, faded parchment and endless, meaningless letters. It is not mummification - rather, it is the resurrection and immortalization of past lives, past hopes and fears and dreams. 

The historian does not worship the past, but instead brings it into the present - refreshes it, remembers it, and, most importantly, learns from it. The historian knows that history is a tool, and that knowledge of history is both an honor and a powerful weapon in the right (or wrong) hands.

Most of all, the historian knows that history is not only the past - it is the future.

A Brief Notation and Public Service Announcement...

Earlier this year, I posted a link to a blog called Culture&Stuff, and I raved about what a wonderful site it was. I went back to visit today, and the blog has apparently been inactive long enough for its URL address to be purchased by someone else.

It is no longer the blog. Instead, what popped up was a brightly colored page with loud music in a language that was not English. As far as I know, my computer does not have a virus, but it was rather terrifying (especially when I was expecting a page with articles on French Revolutionary history).

Please do not go visit the blog! I'm very sad that this has happened, and, if it changes in the future, I will be sure to let you know.

Thank you all.

Same Topic, Different Conclusion: Varying Viewpoints in Historical Study

Every historian will have his or her own view of the past, based on what he or she brings to the project. People from different backgrounds will bring different talents to their field of study. These varying viewpoints make history more interesting to study, because they allow historians to debate over meaning, significance, and interpretation of events.

Nowhere is this more evident than in American diplomatic history, which, as Walter LaFeber points out in his essay "Liberty and Power: U.S. Diplomatic History, 1750 - 1945," has gone through multiple interpretations, all of which can be viewed as correct. The main variations between the historians which LaFeber discusses are the time period in which they live and the school of thought to which they belong, which are often connected. The realists and the revisionists, for example, have different ways of interpreting history, but both views are correct. Realists prefer the "great men" view of history, looking at American politics and diplomatic achievements through the lens of those who, in their views, affected the policies the most. The revisionists, on the other hand, take a wider view, emphasizing instead the importance of economic stresses and foreign policy.

An excellent example of the differences between these two schools of thought is the "open door policy" put into place in China by the United States' Secretary of State, John Hay, at the end of the nineteenth century. George F. Kennan, a realist historian, argued in his book American Diplomacy 1900 - 1950 that the position was bad for the United States because they were manipulated into it by the British. This was due, according to Kennan, to Washington's inability to turn from "misplaced faith in legalisms and morality" or to prevent manipulation by other powerful nations (Foner 377). It was a better representation of British interests in China than American (377). However, according to William Appleman Williams, a revisionist historian, this theory is completely wrong. Williams wrote in his book The Tragedy of American Diplomacy that the open door policy was "engineered not by British officials but by U.S. leaders who fully understood, and were determined to expand, their nations' economic interests" (378).

Both of interpretations of the open door policy are completely valid. Both Kennan and Williams were able to look at the same events and come away with different conclusions because of what they chose to focus on. Because Kennan chose to focus on "great men" and the major political figures, he found one viewpoint; because Williams chose to focus on the economic factors, he found another. Neither one is more important or more correct than the other - they just look at the topic differently.

This is by no means the only example of changing viewpoints within LaFeber's essay. There are many topics for which this is true, and many other groups of historians who have different focuses than revisionists and realists. However, it provides a good example of how historians can interpret events differently, and yet still have a correct interpretation.

John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: Part 2

As promised, here is the review of John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Gaddis' work is on historiography, and so fair warning to those who are looking for a brief pleasure read on how historians do what they do: this is the nuts and bolts of historical work. It is not for the faint of heart.

That being said, Gaddis makes the book entertaining, lacing it with gentle humor and references to other subjects, including literature (the first chapter contains a running metaphor to Virginia Woolf's first novel Orlando, and a later chapter contains a quote from Tolstoy's seminal work War and Peace, not to mention the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Douglas Adams reference - all of which make the English major in me very happy) and paleontology. The writing style is fluid and casual, a professor chatting with a student about the hows and whys of the craft. Because it is a series of lectures that have been taken and turned into essays, Gaddis is able to preserve the conversational tone, and it works very well with the topics that he addresses, preventing them from becoming completely and utterly boring (which, in the hands of another author, could have been the case).

Gaddis does spend quite a bit of time (from about the fourth chapter onwards) mocking the social sciences in a not-so-gentle manner that does not quite fit with his tone in the rest of the essays. He also throws in a few quips against theories that he does not agree with which, if you are not familiar with them (and I'm not - but I'm sure I will become quite familiar with them in the future), you are likely to miss or simply pass over.

Overall, I enjoyed The Landscape of History, but I am glad that I was reading it for class, and not on my own, as pleasure reading. Having the class discussion and writing assignments to structure my reading definitely helped with understanding what to look for in Gaddis' text, which, while conversational, could be difficult to follow at times.

Now on to the next book on my reading list - ironically enough, Orlando.

John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: Part One

As you probably saw in a previous post, I have been reading John Lewis Gaddis' work on historiography, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. This particular post will deal with the first four chapters.

One of the topics that Gaddis brings up is time travel and whether it would make someone a better historian. He points out its use in literature, citing Michael Crichton's Timeline and Connie Willis' Doomsday Book as examples of graduate students jumping back in time for their thesis work.

Michael Crichton's time traveling novel Timeline

Gaddis' main point when it comes to time travel, however, is that, despite it being extremely exciting to see all of these wonderful places and people within their context, "the direct experience of events isn't necessarily the best path toward understanding them, because your field of vision extends no further than your own immediate senses" (4). In other words, going back in time to study the French Revolution, for example, is a bad idea because, since the time traveler will be too busy avoiding Madame la Guillotine, mobs of angry Parisians, and other horrible events on the ground to truly experience the wide affect of events.

I disagree with Gaddis, here, however. Gaddis' statement seems to cover every single type of historical study. But what if you are a historian interested in the social impact of an event? Time travel would be a perfect medium for someone to understand what it was like to live, breath, and survive in times as turbulent as the French Revolution, the War of the Roses, or the Hundred Years War. Imagine what it would be like, as a social historian, to discover what the people of England really thought about the Yorks and the Lancasters - or whether they even cared who was on the throne, so long as there was a king. 

Time travel gives more of a chance for a historian to learn about the things that don't find their ways into the textbooks. Stepping into a time machine, a historian can learn about the social structure at Versailles, not simply by reading about it, but by experiencing it for himself. And he can choose when he wants to go to - the beginning of Versailles' strict etiquette under Louis XIV, or its final lapse under Louis XVI. The possibilities for studying social strata are endless.

Because Gaddis' statement is an all-encompassing denial of the benefits of time travel, I cannot help but disagree with him. There are definitely benefits to traveling through time for a social historian, as it allows for the discovery of information that is left out of many documents, simply because it was irrelevant or so commonplace that it was uninteresting to the chroniclers of the era. By traveling through time, historians would discover new things about a time and its people, and maybe even completely change their perspectives and attitudes towards the cultures they study. 

History Podcast - Stuff You Missed in History Class

I was wandering around the Internet today when I discovered this podcast in the comments section of the NaNoWriMo Facebook page. The title intrigued me, and so I clicked on a podcast, curious to see what they would talk about.

This podcast is amazing.

Normally, I'm not a podcast person. But if you haven't listened to Stuff You Missed in History Class, then you're missing out. They have something to interest everyone - from African History to Pirates to World War II. I listened to two really great podcasts, one on Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the wife of George I of England, and another on Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Both of these women were fascinating to me, not only because they were technically royalty, but also because I had never really heard much about them before. I really want to know more about both of them - especially Sophia Dorothea and her family, because the early Hanovers seem really quite interesting.

Go check out this podcast! It's a great podcast, and one that will really surprise you with how much you learn.

Reading The Landscape of History: Or, Why I Really Like Prose that Flows Well

I'm reading The Landscape of History by John Lewis Gaddis for my history class (future blog posts on this to follow), and I can't help but notice how well Gaddis transitions between huge important historical topics and clever anecdotes and witticisms, which is a trait that I really appreciate in authors (a good example from Gaddis' book is when he opens Chapter Four by talking about how he kept associating the term "teasing out" with hairdressing - which is an amazing analogy, and absolutely hilarious in context).

Which set me to thinking - what is it that I really like about this book? What does it have in common with other non-fiction works that I have enjoyed in the past?

And the answer that I came up with, in my musings, was this: I like prose that flows well.

This may be a trait of being an English major as well, but I enjoy books where the author writes his/her prose as if it is a novel. Some of these works are more successful than others. All of them, however, allow the reader to get into the mind of the people of the time, whether it be through a third person omniscient narrator, or through a semi-narrative, semi-informative method of storytelling. This is a (very limited) list of the ones that I really liked:

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates - David Cordingly
I'm pretty sure that this book reads so well because of the fantastic nature of piracy in general, and the fact that this book focuses mainly on the Golden Age of Piracy (think Blackbeard, Morgan, and Calico Jack) makes it even more fascinating.

Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer - James L. Swanson
This thing reads like a murder mystery and adventure novel. Swanson's narrative never really lags, and the tension constantly builds. I also learned so much about Lincoln, Booth, and the assassination that I didn't read anything that wasn't associated with the main figures for months.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine - Benjamin Wallace
I am unashamedly fond of our third president, and this book deals with him, albeit in a round-about manner: it focuses on one of the greatest scandals in the wine world, that of the Jefferson Wine Bottles. Rumored to be the oldest bottles of wine in existence, their existence was questioned by everyone from the highest of wine critics to the staff of Monticello. But they also fooled the greatest of minds. It's a really entertaining read, going into the story of wine and white-collar crime - and, of course, Thomas Jefferson's sojourn in Paris.

Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 - Bryan Burroughs
This book is amazing - fast-paced, well-researched, and insanely fascinating. It covers all of the major criminals of the day - Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger - in intricate detail, all while contrasting them with the FBI agents who chased them and, in many situations, gunned them down.

One Summer: America, 1927 - Bill Bryson
Honestly, just any of Bill Bryson's books. Because all of them are hilarious. And the ones that I've read - this one, At Home, Shakespeare, and Notes from a Small Island (not technically about history, but with lots of very interesting historical content thrown in at random intervals) are very witty looks at the world.

I'm looking forward to seeing where Gaddis goes with Landscape of History!