David Strittmatter, ohio northern university
PROPOSAL TYPE
Structured Conversation
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Archives
- Material Culture
- Memory
- Museums/Exhibits
- Teaching and Training
ABSTRACT
A fellow history colleague and I will be teaching a special topics public history course at our institution this fall, and the subject matter is directly tied to the university’s sesquicentennial. The course assignments involve a variety of public history initiatives, from recording oral histories with alumni during homecoming week and producing a short documentary on the university’s history to installing displays of university artifacts and writing feature articles about university history for a local newspaper. This venture, of course, is to present the university’s first 150 years in a glowing manner that will make alumni and current students proud. However, is there a place for the embarrassing aspects of institutional history?
DESCRIPTION
I want this conversation to briefly allow participants to explain how their institutional histories have been told, what was done regarding unsavory historical aspects, and the pressures upon curators or archivists to tell specific, “good” histories. At what level does the role of the public historian run counterintuitive to relevant stakeholders?
I am looking for other contributors to such a conference session, ideally those who have worked on institutional history projects in the past few years and dealt with these sorts of issues.
Any commentary on focusing the proposal is welcomed and appreciated.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:David Strittmatter, Ohio Northern University, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 1, 2021. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
David,
This sounds like a really interesting and super pressing topic. I’d like to offer my participation if you still need panelists for this session. I am currently a GRA working on the Center for Public History’s University History Project at the University of West Georgia. As the university is located on the stolen land of the Muscogee (Creek) nation and a former plantation, we have a lot of complicated history to sort through, so we are also discussing and reflecting on how to tell the whole story, including the bad, but also the good, parts. In addition, as an undergrad at William & Mary in Virginia, I worked on the W&M LGBTIQ Research Project conducting oral histories of LGBTQ+ alumni, who experienced a broad spectrum of reception at W&M over the past few decades.
Let me know what help I can be!
(I would also highly encourage you to reach out to folks at W&M as there are some neat projects going on, including the Lemon Project (https://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/) researching enslavement at the College and the Decolonizing Humanities Project (https://www.wm.edu/sites/dhp/)).
Sarah
Is there an office or individual serving as an ‘official’ partner? if so, what are its/their expectations for control of the message? Is there a document in place that discusses this relationship?
Hi, David! Your proposal is fascinating and timely, as my own institution is navigating its unsavory history. As Director of our Museum of Natural History, I sit on a commission by our Chancellor to acknowledge a Native American burial site located in the heart of our campus. Our group includes representation from several affected indigenous stakeholders, and it has taken several years to get to the point where we are today in planning for a permanent memorial and exhibit. If you are looking for a fellow panelist or would like to chat more, please feel free to contact me.
This is a really interesting topic and one that many universities grapple with. I might suggest reaching out to Dr. Thai Jones at Columbia University. Dr. Jones and the staff did a great job documenting the 1968 protests at Columbia. I think their experience would be most helpful for this session.
Hello! If you are still looking for participants, I recently curated digital and in-person exhibits in celebration of the anniversary of the Black Cultural Center at Tennessee Tech University. My partners wanted the anniversary celebration to include the broader history of Black students at the university before the opening of the Center in 1990. One of the digital exhibits interprets the Black institutional history of the university from its segregated roots as the all-white University of Dixie through recent Black students’ experiences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and organizing against racial injustice. We attempted to balance interpretation of barriers, challenges, and trauma for the Black university community with stories of joy and celebration of accomplishments. Previous interpretations of the Black history of the university focused on “firsts”–first Black students, professors, administrators, athletes, etc–with little to no historical context.
The digital exhibits can be viewed here: https://tntecharchives.omeka.net/exhibits/browse?tags=Black+Cultural+Center
Hi David, You might want to check out the emerging discussion in the “What’s in A Name?” proposal, which seems to be honing in on campus commemoration. I would also encourage a bit wider framing than the “proud alumni,” and frame your work more directly on the power struggles in interpretation. I *know* that you are aware that the “proud alums” aren’t the only audience for this work, but their desires can overshadow the experiences of those who confronted (and continue to confront) an educational institution’s “unsavory” history. Good luck!
I came here to say this as well, Modupe, but you’re about 1 hour ahead of me. I think there’s a lot of crossover between these two panels and they might be stronger together. Or help each other hone what the other is doing differently.
This is a very promising endeavour. To answer your question, and I am sure you will agree (at least to some extent), as historians have an obligation to deal with institutional history in a fashion that is balanced. This means offering a complicated historical narrative that allows for celebration of all that has been accomplished while also acknowledging the less savoury aspects of the university’s history. One way to deal with this is to incorporate the voices of those members of the university community that may have felt marginalized. Although this needs to be handled delicately, it can be framed in a way that highlights the progress made over time.
For example, although the ONU faculty and staff organized an event that hosted Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s (something to be celebrated), it would provide some interesting context to learn about the number of African American students and professors who were at ONU at the time. What were their experiences at the institution?
Hi David,
It looks like you have plenty of suggestions here, but I would also recommend reaching out to Kacie Lucchini Butcher ([email protected]), who is the Project Director for the University of Madison-Wisconsin Public History Project which is exploring the history of racism, prejudice, and discrimination on campus there. https://publichistoryproject.wisc.edu/