The United States Holocaust Museum: an example of Exhibition and Memory

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Exhibition and memory have had an unbreakable connection since the beginning of the recording of history. The medieval age saw the creation of formal archives by aristocrats and royals and the early modern age saw the beginnings of public libraries and archives. The display and exhibition of an historical event can affect the interest of the future public and the preservation of the event.

In October, the “Historian’s Workshop Seminar” ventured to Washington D.C. to visit the United States Holocaust Museum located on the National Mall. The museum (and the event it captures) is dedicated an ultimately foreign tragedy, yet its influence and the education it provides can be deemed more than useful for the modern day American public. The museum not only gives insight on the horrors of humanity but provides a fascinating example for the relationship between exhibition and memory. Continue reading →

Blogging on the Blog: A History of the Blog and is it Scholarship?

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In my own research for this blog, I was curious as to the blog’s lifespan, how and why it was created, and how it has evolved. According to an article in New York Magazine, author Clive Thompson gives a basic timeline of the blog dating its birth to 1994 from the computer of a Swarthmore student.  He continues showing the blog’s growth into maturity, becoming a word in the early 2000s, its variations, citing everything from gossip to brokerage blogs, and now to the present where Huffington Post has become a reliable source for news for many and Buzzfeed has taken over the free time of college students and working people alike. Continue reading →

What makes a bowl more than just a bowl?

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One of the objects on display at the United States Holocaust Museum is a copper bowl used in the Treblinka concentration camp.  There is nothing aesthetically special about this bowl unless you consider its imperfections–the dents in the bowl or its rust orange color–to be unique.  There are many bowls that were used in the Treblinka concentration camp.  The question becomes what makes this bowl special, and why was it this bowl taken away from the camp?  One bowl can lead us to the bigger questions about what makes any object significant for display in a museum? Why is one object chosen over similar objects to represent history? Continue reading →

Reimagining of the VHS

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The Virginia Historical Society (VHS) is in the process of spending $38 million on reimagining its museum.  The purpose of this extensive redesign is to better educate people on Virginia’s history and to increase visitors to the museum.  Having the opportunity to visit the exhibit in progress showed the limitation that space places on an exhibit.  Issues dealing with exhibit design, artifact selection, and the ways that Virginian history will be told must be addressed within the given space of the museum.  The ways that the museum space will be utilized will be influenced by the decisions of historians, exhibit designers, and even those on the board of the museum. Continue reading →

Story of Virginia: A Historic Rebirth in the Making

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Over the past few decades, attendance at many historic sites and house museums has declined steadily.  It is arguable that cultural institutions and practices undergo lifecycles and eventually die out, and that history museums may be about to do the same.  The Virginia Historical Society (VHS) faces the same challenging environment.  Cary Carson discusses the culprits for this trend and attempts to offer solutions in his article “The End of History Museums: What’s Plan B?”  Carson, the vice president for research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has much first-hand knowledge of the effectiveness of marketing and immersion with respects to generating revenue for historic sites.  The VHS has compiled a list of strategic objectives, its plan B, in order to escape the attendance troubles that have plagued the field.  Can history museums, like the VHS, survive, develop their educational missions, and remain financially viable? Continue reading →

The Implications of Digital Research for Historians

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No one can deny the rapid progress of information technology over the last few decades.  We have seen these changes in all aspects of our lives, from the workplace, to consumerism, and transportation.  These changes have had major implications on historicism as well.  Cameron Blevins provides an explanation about the production of space and place in America during the late nineteenth century in “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston.”  Similarly, Matthew Wilkens’ article, “The Geographic Imagination of Civil War-Era American Fiction,” details how he was able to use documents in the nineteenth century to draw an imaginative geography of America.  So how have these modernized changes, discussed in these two articles, affected the capabilities of researching and documentation of history?  Continue reading →

History Evolved: The Use of Digital Scholarship in Historical Research

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When the Internet was introduced to the world, untold possibilities came to life. No longer did a person have to do research simply from archives or monographs in libraries. Now they could get onto a computer and look up information. This was not just for the everyday person though. Scholars could also use the web to disseminate their findings, whether it be through online scholarly articles or through more informal blogs and digital exhibitions. On top of this a technology was born to research history in a whole new way. Continue reading →

The Library as the Center of Community

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When I walked into the Library of Virginia a few weeks ago, the first thing I noticed was not the books, or exhibition signs but rather, the people themselves. They were both people who had come in from the street to use the atrium as a place to sit and talk and get out of the cold and people there to check out books and review records. When I have always thought of a library I have always thought about scholars finding their materials to write about or the young kid checking out his first library book. What I saw before me that day though was not just that, it was actually so much more.  But what was this something more? Why did it strike me as it did? Continue reading →

History Blogging: what is the deal with that?

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In 2014, social media is the fastest form of communication, and there is an outlet for anybody and everybody to express their interests and opinions. With this comes a new way to present and discuss history, even while it is happening. Blogging provides a niche for any area of the past to be analyzed and discussed in public, by anyone from Ph.D. historians to journalists to the general public. Continue reading →

How Can Historians Bring the Past into the Present?

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Can the arbiters of the past tear themselves away from it? This question repeatedly entered my thoughts during Edward Ayers’ visit to our class in mid-November when he discussed his role in digital scholarship’s advancement in the study of history and the current status of modern technological use in the field. His most notable contribution to digital history, a massive resource of primary documents from two counties on opposing sides of the Civil War called the Valley of the Shadow, has undergone remarkably little alteration since its creation in 1990 (aside from the actions taken to keep it internet-accessible). While prominent historians like Dr. Ayers press for the field of history to move forward with digital accessibility and digital research methods, they have been disappointed with the pace of change. Continue reading →