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.