Archives: Thinking About the Future

With the end of archives class approaching faster, our readings have taken a turn to the future. As an avid science fiction fan, I love contemplating the future. My historian side is equally interested in how past people did the same thing. Perusing Archives in the News I was delighted with the article “100 Year Old Time Capsule Opened In Oklahoma City.”

This particular time capsule contained a variety of documents and artifacts, not different from the types of things that museums and archives collect. Judging from the images the time capsule did a decent job protecting the material, probably due to being buried under concrete in a church basement and not in the great outdoors.

Though access is by far the most important purpose of archives, there is some truth, and a good deal of romance, to archivists needing to speculate about what people of the future will need.    One of the concerns with digital technologies in archives is the limited lifespan of different formats. In 1913, The Ladies Aid Society was aware enough of changing technologies to include an Edison Phonograph in the capsule with their recordings.

Most documents in archives were not created with the future in mind. Nor are most documents in archives meant for specific individuals, as are the letters from the time capsule. Archives continuously re-interpret their collections for researchers in the present. Sometimes archives users imagine that they are in a time capsule when the actuality is that the material they are researching have gone though many hands. A feeling of discovery and nostalgia are inherent in time capsules, but the research value of their contents is limited. Regardless, for archives thinking about how the field will develop, time capsules represent moments when people in the past thought about, and tried to develop solutions to the same thing.

Archives: Advocacy and Education

Last weekend I traveled to Washington and, within the slew of museum visits, found booths at the Air and Space Museum promoting the archives. Air and Space Museum Archives’ representatives had set up two tables close to the entrance of the building. 

One table promoted the collections. This table displayed selected documents and the folder and box from which the documents originated. The display exuded the feeling that the box is a treasure trove of interesting things, but did not highlight any one particular document. The second table promoted preservation and sought to educate visitors about how to take care of family papers. This table had a few posters on preservation and conservation and handouts. The handouts came in sleeves (nice touch to set a good example) and contained basic information about handling, storage, and environmental conditions.

Though I enjoyed the tables they did not seem to have a lot of traffic. With how chaotic the Air and Space Museum gets on a Saturday afternoon, the archives tables easily faded into the crowd. Getting people to look down at papers while their heads are looking up at the spaceships is a challenge. Being in a museum that focuses on visitors looking at things, I think some visitors may not have wanted to stop by a table where people are looking at them look at the stuff. Some type of permanent rotating exhibit could be more fitting with visitor expectations, but then it would not come with the same type of experience of being able to talk with the staff and grasp the documents.

Despite the challenges, this type of display is a good way to combine of advocating for the archives with educational outreach. Most successfully, this type of exhibition of archival material and outreach provided the museum visitors who stopped to look a chance to see the institution’s inner workings.

Reading Response: The Future of Material Culture

Future material culture studies could go on many paths, as this week’s readings attest. Whether it’s integrating material culture into scholarly articles, bringing theory to material culture, or taking the study of material culture outside of history, these readings show some possible paths.

Cary Carson’s “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” reflected on the state of material culture studies. Carson points out how material culture scholars tend to import the theoretical foundations of their ideas. Carson places scholars of material culture within the larger umbrella of scholars of American history. Material culture studies has been an isolated field and I appreciate the idea of inclusion. From our past readings, Ulrich is a good example of this type of history: using material culture to tell history and not worrying about crossing disciplinary boundaries.

“The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930” Angel Kwolek-Folland provides an example of how traditional historical scholarship could integrate material culture studies. Kwolek-Folland concludes that the structures of office buildings reinforced domestic gender roles between male and female workers even when doing so went against the ideal work environment. The parallels between public work life and private family life shows how cultures operate in seemingly different spaces.

Devon Elliott et al.’s “New Old Things” questioned how historians could collaborate with other fields and find new, interdisciplinary ways to study material culture. This research utilized 3-d printers and model-making to replicate historic magic tricks. While I think that 3-d printing is a fad at the moment, I loved the way that this group approached a historical question about senses and communication. The idea that doing research can also be like playing, and might involve failure is powerful.

As much as I tried to give it a chance, Bill Brown’s “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object” did not do anything for me. On one hand, I think its great that high-theory people are getting into looking at material culture. On the other hand, the public historian in me despises Brown’s writing style. Brown studies the novelty collectible items that proliferated after 9/11 and relates these items to the issues of nationalized commodities. Brown’s sources are almost entirely theoreticians, rarely are they people who produce or consume the material in question.

One thing this weeks readings did was highlight the divide between academic historians and public historians who work outside of the academe. Carson emphasized that material culture scholars need to be involved in telling a national story. I believe this task is one that public historians dealing with material culture are fit to try. Reading Brown’s article, I get a sense that the theory which grounds much social and cultural history is narrow when considering the whole of human culture. “New Old Things” offers a good lesson for new material culture studies, namely that it may involve collaborating and looking outside of the theoretical base that history offers.


Readings

Brown, Bill. “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object,” in Hasselstein, et al., eds, The Pathos of Authenticity: American Passions of the Real, 33-52. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2010.

Carson, Cary. “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” in American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field, 401-428. Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 1997.

Elliott, Devon, Robert MacDougall, William J. Turkel, “New Old Things: Fabrication, Physical Computing, and Experiment in Historical Practice,” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no.1 (April 2012): 121-128.

Kwolek-Folland, Angel. “The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930,” in Katherine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender: The Gender of Material Culture, 157-179. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997.

Exhibit Caption, Final

Here is the final edited version of my exhibit caption:

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, a British General in the French and Indian War. Robert Tempest acquired this horn after Braddock’s death in 1755. Engraving their names and adding metal fixtures, five generations of Tempests turned this horn into a canvas documenting their personal connection to colonial America. 

I kept to a straightforward, chronological history of the horn that reflects back to colonial America at the end. Referencing how the Tempests altered the horn and used it to connect them to the past brings in the commemorative aspects of the horn. (And, it's exactly 50 words. Yay!)

Archives: Power

Randall Jimerson’s “Embracing the Power of Archives” is a thought provoking reflection on the responsibilities of archives. Using metaphors of a temple, a prison, and a restaurant, Jimerson explains the different ways that people understand archives and the power that archives hold. The ample pop culture references made Jimerson a fun read, but more importantly, he manages to convey complex ideas with simple language.

On the rise of postmodern thought Jimerson states, “There is a fundamental, if unpleasant, truth in this postmodern critique. Unfortunately it is obscured in writings of many postmodernists by jargon, convoluted syntactical gyrations, and a good dose of claptrap.” (22) On one hand, I completely love this statement. On the other, I am tempted to analyze Jimerson’s idealistic suggestions in light of everyday archival practices.

Jimerson’s first suggestion is for archives to abandon the pretense of neutrality and objectivity. The ability to be purely objective is not possible. However, representing diverse segments of society does require that archivist not get too caught up with one political perspective. For Jimerson, the guise of objectivity hides political decisions, yet I feel like embracing the politics could very well lead to the same situation.

The benefit of acknowledging biases is that it becomes easier for society to hold archive accountable. As an ideal, archival accountability sounds great. In practice, what does it mean to hold an institution accountable? There are many answers. Accountability could mean having open board meetings, letting people have a say in collecting practices, or it could influence staff procedures.

Probably the most crucial of Jimerson’s suggestions is for archivists to recognize that that they hold power and are responsible to society. An aspect of archival power missing from this article is that people need to learn about archival practices for any of these suggestions to stick. If people think that archives are supposed to keep everything and archivist know that this is not practical financially or for users, Jimerson’s suggestions could cause more strife than most archives can deal with.

Reading

Jimerson, Randall. “Embracing the Power of Archives,” American Archivist 69, no. 1 (Spring - Summer, 2006): 19-32.

Exhibit Caption Selections

Having made all the selections, there were a few things that stood out. Universally, I want the caption to tell me something that I cannot say about the object from looking at it. This might be one of those ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ things, but I try to point those moments out in the explanations. I also want the caption to tell me something about the object’s background: when it was made, who made it, or where it came from. Because all of our objects commemorate different things and were made in different times for different reasons this is especially important.

Chelsea
2. A Collector’s Item
During the Bicentennial boom, manufacturers produced America-themed items to market to the patriotic public of the mid-1970s. This McCormick Distilling Company decanter belonged to a set of seven Revolutionary War figurines called the Patriot Series, including: Betsy Ross, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

This caption tells me where and when the decanter originated. Also, knowing that this is just one of the set and seeing the list of who else got a decanter makes me imagine what those others look like.

Stephen
2. This commemorative block from the HMS Minden, the ship where Francis Scott Key was believed to have composed The Star Spangled Banner was a high status commemorative object. President Lincoln was known to have had a cane made of the same material.

I like the way that this caption immediately identifies with the object and lets the reader know the object was once part of a ship. The detail about Lincoln is novel and gives readers the impression of how significant this type of object is to people.

Lyell
3.  The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, engraved on this badge worn at a 1941 Elks Lodge convention, took on increasingly symbolic roles leading up to the country’s participation in World War II. Fittingly, the badge eventually entered the collection of the late Manfred Anson, an escapee from Nazi Germany who cherished the values associated with these symbols of freedom.

This caption ties itself together nicely. I like how it goes from symbols-of-freedom, pre-war, during war, then back to symbols-of-freedom. The information related to the collector gives me background I would never get just looking at the object.

Kelsey
1.  This commemorative flag resembled miniature flags sold at Independence Hall in 1898 by Betsy Ross’s granddaughters.  The miniature flags sold at Independence Hall helped raise donations for the preservation of the American Flag house, where it is believed that Betsy Ross created the first American flag during the Revolutionary War. This commemorative flag celebrated the Betsy Ross story and that moment in American women’s history.

I was really torn with this one. I liked #3 and how it references the bicentennial, but ended up choosing this one because I would never get the Betsy Ross connection on my own. I like the way the back-story is more narrative-based. Women are also lacking in all of our objects so we need this one to represent.

Sharron
1.  Taking a drink from this porcelain gem was not even a remote consideration in the 18th century.  This commemorative pitcher was a physical way of memoralizing American Independence.  Crafted in North Staffforshire, England almost exclusively to meet American demand, this symbolic pitcher celebrates both American Independence and the brotherly bond between America’s first President, George Washington and his French protégé Marquis de Lafayette – a bond that lasted until Washington’s death in 1799.

I chose this object because it covers where the object was created. The irony of England manufacturing American goods is not overstated, but also is clear for people who read it and gives them something to muse over while looking at the pitcher.

Reading Response: African American Material Culture

As this weeks readings attest to, figuring out how to study African American material culture first involves deciding what it means to label a person African American and what forms of material culture historians are studying. Traditional questions in the field revolve around whether or to what extent African American material culture is derived from Africa, the effects of slavery on African American material culture, and the development of folk crafts outside of Westernized markets.

Theodore Landsmark’s historiographical essay "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life" provides a decent summary of the scholarship of African American material culture. A point that Landsmark drives home when discussing future trends is the complexity of African American culture. Different circumstances and cultures in the north and south influenced the development of diverse material cultures that can all be called African American.

Jonathan Prown adapts this nuanced conception of what it means to be African American and how the influences material culture. In “The Furniture of Thomas Day” Prown investigate African American furniture maker Thomas Day. Day’s furniture has much in common with contemporary urban furniture making traditions, and it is tough for Prown to distinguish a distinct African American touch. Only with documentary sources Prown is able to string together a story that involves Day’s African American identity. 

In “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” Ann Martin analyzed store logs recording African American purchases, particularly the purchase of ribbon and a mirror by a slave named Suckey. Martin looks at how slaves interacted with the market, how they paid for their goods, and the types of things they bought. For Martin, the store is a particularly important place because it a metaphorical mirror of society. The things that slaves bought with what little money they had shows how they worked to foster an identity outside of slavery.

Both Martin and Prown partially based their search for African American meanings in material culture on the material in question having some connection with African traditions. For Prown it was if the form of the furniture had an African source. For Martin it was if the meaning of Suckey’s mirror had anything to do with African spiritualism. With limited success, both authors downplay this traditional perspective, instead highlighting how the material complicates what we think we know about African American culture.

For my forth article, I chose Debra Reid’s "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." This article focuses on the material life of African American farmers. One aspect of this article that sets it apart is that it is from the perspective of agricultural history and considers material culture in a more expansive light than is typical. The material acquisitions of farm families included land and livestock in addition to furniture, equipment, and houses. Reid looks at how the laws and treatment of land-holding African American farmers affected the way that they acquired property, mostly in areas with poor soil far from rail lines, and how their material circumstances changed, such as transitioning from a hearth to cook stoves.

Reid’s article in not as nuanced as Martin’s or Prown’s, but she does get at an aspect of African American material culture history that I believe is part of the reason why these studies are so rare outside slavery studies. Reid discusses how in the 1920s and 1930s, especially with New Deal photography, the farms in question became symbols of poverty and an absence of material goods. Additionally, a farmer’s understanding of their property and material surrounding is specific to their circumstances. Perhaps, when Prown lamented not having analogous research to cite, what he really needed was analogous research that considers class and circumstances over ethnicity.

Readings

Landsmark, Theodore C. "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 261-282.

Martin, Ann Smart. “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” in Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, 173-193. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Prown, Jonathan. "The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 215-229.

Reid, Debra A. "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." Agricultural History 80, no. 3 (2006): 336-357.

I was between a few articles for African American material culture. Ultimately I chose the one about agricultural history because it offers a different perspective of material culture than what we typically see. The other articles were:

Klassen, Pamela E. "The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture 14, no. 1 (2004): 39-82.

Mullins, Paul R. "Race and the Genteel Consumer: Class and African-American Consumption, 1850-1930." Historical Archaeology 33, no. 1 (1999): 22-38.

Archives: Born Digital Sources

After doing this week’s readings and spending some time on Archive-It, I have been thinking about the complications of archiving born-digital content. Reacting to the popular view among historians that this type of preservation is the responsibility of archivists, in “Scarcity or Abundance?” Roy Rosenzweig advocates that historians become more aware of and involved in preserving digital content.

Rosenzweig has a point: historians will one day need to be using this content and it would benefit us to prepare. Thinking about what historical research of born digital content means is a more mind-bending reflection. Catherine O’Sullivan muses over the implications of blogs for the historical record. The public nature of blogs versus the private nature of their content creates an ethical question for archivists, namely, who can digitize these materials? Does the creator need to give permission to the archives or can the archives just preserve it? If the creator decided to delete their website forever, is that their right?

Both Rosenzweig and O’Sullivan agree that however digital content is preserved, it will likely not be a perfect record. Historians acknowledge that the record of the past is full of holes. Personally, I think the holes make history fun. Not knowing every detail about the past is what enables historians to interpret it.

My first impression of Archive-It is that much of the content is analogous to the type of content found in a paper archives, replete with holes. The websites captured do not include all links and only provide a glance at what the actual experience of being on the website was like. The grouping of collections reminds me of series in an archives. Learning how to deal with digital content involves an expansion of the skill sets that historians usually come with, but maybe if we found a way to teach historians that their larger methodologies are not so different when using digital materials they would be more willing to accept them.

Readings

O'Sullivan, Catherine. "Diaries, Online Diaries and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them." American Archivist 68, no. 1 (2005).

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,”

American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 735-762.

Exhibit Captions

Caption 1

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, British General during the French and Indian War. Braddock died in battle after disregarding his colonial compatriots’ advice. Acquiring the horn, the Tempest family added the metal fixtures and their own names. In doing so this Philadelphia family connected themselves to the colonial period when Americans began developing an independent identity.

Caption 1 – Thoughts

For this caption, I wanted to get a sense of the larger, national narrative in which the Tempest Powder Horn fits. This caption relays the traditional interpretation of Braddock and the French and Indian War. The horn serves as a link between the family and the larger narrative. For visitors this mediation could be a way to think about the relationships between people and famous historical figures and begin a conversation about why these relationships exist. If the overall exhibit focuses on commemorating the founding of the new nation and we were organizing it by chronology of the event remembered, than this would be a potential label. The chronology in this case would go from the French and Indian War to the War of 1812.

Caption 2

In 1834, Robert Tempest added his name to a new silver band on this recently inherited powder horn. According to family legend, the horn belonged to British General Edward Braddock who died in the French and Indian War. By altering the horn Tempest family members claimed their place in the story of America’s colonial foundations.

Caption 2 – Thoughts

With this caption I wanted get a little more personal and use the experience of one Robert Tempest as a way to relate to the visitors. Often, families will have stories of objects that are meaningful, regardless of whether or not they are true. The feeling of inheriting one of these objects can be like owning a little bit of history. In this way visitors can access the object through an individual and understand commemoration by feeling what is like to think about family and personal histories. This caption leaves the horn’s history before the Tempests acquired it and its elaborate decorations as mysteries that the visitor can ponder if they wish. I imagine that this would be an appropriate label if we did the exhibit about how commemorating the founding of America comes from different sources. The powder horn, in this scenario, would be about families and individuals remembering personal histories in ways that thy feel are significant to the nation as a whole. Other object come from companies, clubs, and official organizations.

Caption 3

Robert Tempest acquired this powder horn in the 1750s and passed it to his son. Five generations of Tempests owned this horn, among them weavers, soldiers, and silversmiths. Reportedly belonging to notorious British General Edward Braddock in the French and Indian War, this horn became a canvas for one Philadelphia family to create their own legacy in the new American nation.

Caption 3 – Thoughts

This caption focuses on the Tempest family as a whole and the question of what it means that they continuously used and altered the powder horn. Like Caption 2, this caption relies on the visitor’s sense of family as an entry point for relating to the powder horn. The idea that the family tried to write out Braddock, commonly made out to be a fool in the historical record, and insert themselves could be a good conversation point for thinking about how different people can relate to past figures and events when they do not feel any connections. If the exhibit focused on how people use commemoration as a way to construct their histories than this caption would fit in.

Final Thoughts

A challenge I had with beginning to write these exhibit captions was deciding on a main subject and action. The horn has so many names on it and potentially all of these names tell a story. How to roll commemoration in with it and make sure that the writing is relevant to the mission of Independence Hall and the theme of building a new nation added more challenges. Doing this in fifty words is definitely more difficult, and took way more time, than I originally assumed.

To fit in with the mission of Independence Hall and the other artifacts I tried to use Braddock as a way to link the colonial period and the French and Indian War to the colonists beginning to view themselves as somehow independent from Britain. This connection in combination with the ways the Tempest’s engraved their own names on the horn provides a good platform to think about how people commemorate the founding of the nation. One thing that sets this particular artifact apart from the others is that specific individuals initiated the commemorating on the Tempest Powder Horn. Most of the artifacts were either mass produced, manufactured, purchased, or created for profit.

Each caption places the Tempests, Braddock, and commemoration in a particular relationship with slightly different connotations. Right now I like Caption 3 because it give a sense of the family and the generations that the horn lived through. Additionally, Caption 3 focuses on how, in addition to commemorating the colonial era, the alterations allowed the family to create a legacy. For thinking about commemoration, this type of active history making would be a useful conversation point.

Reading Response: Theory and Material Culture

This week’s readings tackled theory and material culture. While the writers use different aspects of material culture to link to theory, they all highlight the difficulty of theorizing things. Most theory focuses on abstract ideas whereas things are tangible. The benefit of these writings is that they can bring material culture studies to a wider academic audience.

Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” traces changes in art that resulted from technological innovations. As material culture studies, this piece is a great example of how different types of material culture affect one another and how society as a whole uses, reacts to, and develops alongside these changes. I admire Benjamin’s writing, in particular the way that he places his subject clearly within the present in which he wrote. Reproduction and questions of new technologies are as relevant today as they were in 1936. The themes of presenting and disseminating information and the blurry line between authorship and readership have particular importance for current cultural studies of the Internet.

Jean Baudrillard analyses the whole atmosphere of domestic spaces and interprets the symbolic meaning of the stuff within. This reading is more difficult to grasp than the others. Unlike Benjamin, who pinpointed the historic moment in which he wrote, Baudrillard is abstract and does not place himself in historical context. His theory of material culture ultimately highlights a constructivist perspective and looks for the ways people manipulate their surroundings to appear natural. This theory involves the scholar taking a more detached view a material than the other writings, which focus on material that is living.

Daniel Miller’s “Theories of Things” directly confronts the difficulties to theorizing about material culture and how humans relate to stuff. I am attracted to the framing theory. This theory acknowledges the stuff that humans interact with as being integral parts of daily life but also explains how these things become so normalized as to be invisible. This explanation of why stuff is sometimes invisible helps me understand why lots of theorists tend to disregard the material world. Miller’s idea that objects make people is also thought provoking and could relate to the Tempest Powder Horn because the horn’s owners (after the first) all grew up with the thing before it became theirs. In a sense, this approach gives agency to objects and takes it away from people.

Glenn Adamson’s “The Case of the Missing Footstool” focuses on how historians can use the gaps in the material record as ways to deepen historical interpretations. Adamson studied the footstool, common from the eighteenth century, but absent before. Adamson offers a few hypotheses, but the most effective is his nuanced interpretation of how the adoption of the footstool could represent a normalizing of exotic cultures.

I am not sure which approach best aides my interpretation of the Tempest Powder Horn. Despite its functional form, the horn is primarily decorative. I like Adamson’s method for looking at a classification of objects, but do not think it applies to the horn. Miller and Benjamin offer me the most. In terms of changing technologies, the horn’s meaning likely changed when guns were manufactured without the need for separate powder horns. This point in time may have helped determine why the horn was altered and revered in the later generations of the family.

Readings: 

Adamson, Glenn. “The Case of the Missing Footstool: Reading the Absent Object” in Karen Harvey, ed., History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Functional System, or Object Discourse,” in The System of Objects. London: Verso, 2005: 11-69.

Miller, Daniel. “Theories of Things,” in Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010: 54-78.