Explorations in “Historical Hotness”

Hey, handsome stranger
Saw your pic in the archives
Too bad you're dead now

Rebecca Goldman, winner, Archival Haiku 2011

Mustaches are really hot right now.

Not modern mustaches—though handlebars seem to be making an ironic comeback—but the facial hair of the past.  Seeing through the facial hair to the faces, viewers move, perhaps, toward a more empathetic view of people of the past.

Mustaches of the 19th Century was an early harbinger of this trend.  Beginning in 2007, the blog posted photos of unidentified gentlemen with interesting mustaches, complete with snarky faux-historical commentary. The photos all came from the collections of the University of Kentucky Archives; the blog was jokingly conceived as an online exhibit by a photo archivist there.

This year, a Smithsonian Magazine poll celebrated the Civil War sesquicentennial by asking visitors to vote on the best facial hair among those who served in the conflict.  As of late August, 2011, Ambrose Burnside, whose eponymous whisker style is now known as “sideburns,” was blowing away the competition. The comments are full of nominations of other Civil War figures with notable facial hair (“Where’s Longstreet?”), laments for the lack of Southerners among the 25 photos in the poll, wishes for the return of such arresting facial hair, and comments on the beauty of the officers' hair and eyes.

Facial hair is not the only suddenly compelling part of history’s faces.  My Daguerreotype Boyfriend, a tumblr blog situated “where early photography meets historical hotness” presents photos of men from the 19th century.  Most of the photos identify both the person pictured and the repository, a tribute to the care for accuracy of the site's founder, Michelle Legro, a writer and editor.  The site became a minor meme, possibly due to its location on tumblr, a lightweight blog platform that makes sharing trivially easy. 

And as a response to the popularity of the men-only My Daguerreotype Boyfriend, Jerry Simmons, an archivist at the National Archives, started My Civil War Girlfriend, “a place to share photos of your favorite 1860s-era cutie.”  A photo of Sarah Emma Edmonds is captioned “I think my Civil War girlfriend can beat up your daguerreotype boyfriend” and, while soliciting submissions of photos with clever captions, the site comes with a caveat to treat all the photo subjects kindly.

These sites showcasing the appearances of the people of the past do objectify those people--but in a gentle, silly way that affirms their—and our—common humanity.  Who knew sideburns could be gateways to the soul?

~ Suzanne Fischer

IMAGE:  Albert Wolfe, c. 1901 from My Daguerrotype Boyfriend

Ice wars: The rebirth of the Winnipeg Jets

Canadian governments on both sides of the political spectrum since the Second World War have been much less willing to invest in the country’s military (the world’s fourth-largest in 1945, but only the 56th today) than in the image of Canada as peace keeper (most notably through the invention of the UN Peacekeepers by Canadian diplomat and later Prime Minister Lester Pearson). Indeed, the Canadian Forces recruitment campaign ads on TV feature the forces rescuing explorers in the Arctic, and assisting at the sites of natural disasters. For many Canadians, this is our interaction with the Armed Forces: they bail us out of floods and, in Toronto, snow storms.

Recently, however, two occurrences have upset this traditional view of Canada and its military within the country. In June, the Winnipeg Jets hockey team was re-born. The Jets had been a member of the National Hockey League from 1979-95, when the team, plagued by a tiny arena and a sinking Canadian dollar, flew off to Phoenix to become the Coyotes. This spring, however, the Atlanta Thrashers were sold to Winnipeg businessmen and moved back to the capital of Manitoba. The problem of the small arena was solved by a new building downtown and that of the economic issues by a Canadian dollar that is at par with the American greenback. Never mind the fact that Winnipeg, with a population of just over 500,000, is the smallest city in the National Hockey League.

The name “Jets” has a long history with the city of Winnipeg, given the city’s involvement in the aerospace industry in the country, and the Royal Canadian Air Force, whose 17 Wing is based at CFB Winnipeg. The Winnipeg Jets 1.0, however, did not capitalise on this connection, beyond the team name. The Winnipeg Jets 2.0 have a different idea. The new team has patterned its logos on the classic Second World War symbols of the RCAF, complete with the roundels (themselves based on the British RAF) and maple leaves. The colours of the team, military blue, gun metal grey and maple leaf red, have a definite martial feel to them. The Jets’ chairman, Mark Chipman, stated, “We felt it was important to authenticate the name Jets and we believe the new logo does that through its connection to our country’s remarkable Air Force heritage, including the rich history and relationship that our city and provinces have enjoyed with the Canadian Forces.”

The timing of the Jets’ return and Chipman’s announcement were interesting. Last month, the Canadian government announced the restructuring of the Canadian military and the re-naming of the forces. In particular, the Canadian Navy and Air Force got their “Royal” monikers back, after losing them in 1968 during the last restructuring of the forces.

In 1968, the country was riding a high of (Anglo-Canadian) nationalism, coming off the success of Expo ’67 in Montréal. The nation’s literati extolled the virtues of the “True North, Strong and Free.” That same year, Canada got a sexy, young Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who inspired “Trudeaumania”, as women from coast to coast dreamed of the PM (I’m not making this up, my mother was obsessed with Mr. Trudeau after her crush on Paul McCartney wore off). The removal of the “Royal” from our military seemed an imperative, as did the rationalisation of the Canadian military.

In 2011, the Conservatives are back in power after a long walk in the wilderness and after a frustrating stint as the leaders of a minority government. The Conservatives, just like the Liberals in 1968, are bent on re-making Canada in their image, but the image is a rather different one. Stephen Harper’s government is focussing on allegedly “traditional” Canadian values: the military, the north, and hockey (they forgot beer and Tim Horton’s, but that’s another story). Canada’s government spends a lot of time extolling the virtues of the nation’s armed forces and is spending a lot of money on refurbishing the military’s hardware. At the same time, Canada is a belligerent in Afghanistan (though, to be fair, this campaign began under the previous Liberal government) and has provided support in Libya.

This has been somewhat of a shock to many Canadians; the Twittersphere and blogosphere have been chirping about the “un-Canadianess” of the focus on the military. But, as a friend of mine, a former member of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (once based in Winnipeg, no less) noted in a discussion about the re-naming of the military, a strong martial culture has long existed on the Prairies and the Maritimes, at odds with the peace-keeping trope that has dominated in the nation’s largest cities and the industrial cores in Eastern Canada and the West Coast. Having said that, Canada’s martial history is largely centred on the two world wars. Canada does not have a great military tradition outside of the periods from 1914-18 and 1939-45.

In short, what we have is a very blatant struggle for a usable past in Canada between the federal Conservative government and the opposition Liberal and New Democratic Party. Beyond that, it is a struggle for a usable past on the part of Canadians of different political stripes. And the Winnipeg Jets 2.0 have ventured, perhaps unwittingly, into a very loaded political minefield.

~ Matthew Barlow

Fear and loathing at the Coliseum

There's no doubt that my favorite news story of the week is the one about policemen in Rome going undercover as tourists, garbage collectors, and--yes--gladiators in order to cool the jets of rival groups of real faux gladiators who pose for tourists' photographs near the Roman Coliseum and elsewhere. Apparently some of these bad boys had been fighting amongst themselves over prime pieces of tourist turf, and the police stepped in to try to restore order.

Having studied military reenactment for a number of years, I can attest that the public seems endlessly fascinated by the antics of men in arcane military garb, and I'm not surprised that this story has been flitting through the mediascape as a quirky novelty item. I also suspect there's more going on than the basic news story is capturing, but even the bare-bones version raises questions for me about the place of self-outfitting performers within historical places and productions. Whether it's hobbyist reenactors providing a corps of extras for a History Channel project, "natives" of various kinds pursuing the time-honored strategy of performing themselves for the tourist gaze, or "olde tyme" tour guides taking visitors around a city near you, encounters with the past increasingly seem to involve these entrepreneurial costumed figures who animate the landscape and give their audiences a little jolt of "pastness," along with a good photo op.

As I say, there may well be much more to this particular story, but it makes me wonder whether this is just an Italian thing--wise guys in leather skirts--or whether our globally straitened circumstances are producing new tensions at these frontiers of the knowledge and service economy. If there aren't enough tourist euros to go around, do the costumed performers start turning on each other, making represented warfare into something real? In a year that's already seen camels and donkeys from tourist concessions at the Egyptian pyramids ridden into the midst of a revolutionary gathering as an intimidation tactic, maybe we're getting hints that the boundaries of the real world and historical make-believe are not only blurring, but becoming impossible to sustain at all.

~ Cathy Stanton

Teddy Roosevelt's rocks: Speak softly and carry a big history

The recent reviews of Ken Burns’ National Parks film in The Public Historian got me thinking about the NPS site in my hometown, Oyster Bay, Long Island. Sagamore Hill was the home of Theodore Roosevelt for most of his adult life, and it was where he died in 1919. Many years later, it was also the place where I began my career in public history, as a seasonal park ranger. I often return to this site, both physically and metaphorically, when pondering issues in our field.

One of the things that I love about Sagamore Hill is the way it allows visitors to explore both history and nature—appropriate for a site that honors a person who was both president of the American Historical Association and an ardent conservationist. The focal point of the site is Roosevelt’s house, which is filled with trophies from his many hunting expeditions, a dramatic, if not universally appealing display of Roosevelt’s visceral connection to the natural environment. The farm fields, orchard, woodlands, salt marsh, and beach near the house are even more important evidence of the influence of nature on Roosevelt. (Currently, NPS is implementing a cultural landscape rehabilitation project at the site that includes restoration of the historic farm fields and orchard.) Fittingly, other Roosevelt-related sites--Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands of North Dakota, and Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C--share this trait of intertwining historical and natural landscapes.

So what does this have to do with rocks? In addition to Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay is filled with memorials to Theodore Roosevelt and the Roosevelt family. (In fact, I’m writing this post in the town’s public library, which contains a memorial to the president’s son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who died during World War II.) As a kid, I went to Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School, visited the Theodore Roosevelt Bird Sanctuary, and played on the playground at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park.

In that park is a curious little memorial that, although not under the purview of NPS, sums up why I think Roosevelt is the perfect link between historical and environmental narratives. It is literally Roosevelt’s story written in rocks. The rocks were collected in the early 1920s, shortly after Roosevelt’s death, from various places where significant events in his life occurred. For example, there is a granite block from Moosehead Lake, Maine where Roosevelt went as a young man to regain his health and a boulder from San Juan Hill, Cuba where his “Rough Riders” made their famous charge for American imperialism. There is also a boulder from the Adirondacks where he learned that McKinley had been shot, another from the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal, and a piece of anthracite coal from Pennsylvania which was a gift from Gifford Pinchot (see image at top).

Although historians don’t often use rocks as artifacts to interpret history--we generally think, perhaps rightly, that furnishings, clothing, tools, and other pieces of material culture offer more compelling interpretive opportunities--these rocks are strangely captivating to me. I think it’s because I see in them a way to think about history more expansively--almost as a geologist might. They might even lead us toward an approach that some scholars have labeled “Big History.” Proponents of this type of history like to examine things on a grand scale--the really longue durée. (Check out this TED talk from David Christian where he traces the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the Internet in 18 minutes.)

As used in the memorial, the rocks are little more than relics, similar to the handfuls of dirt that people took from the old Yankee Stadium before it was demolished. Yet they represent epochs of earth’s geological history and multiple human histories as well. Thinking of them in this way requires some imagination and a willingness to think beyond their narrow association with Roosevelt and ponder much longer time spans and processes. Imagine using the San Juan Hill boulder to probe the arrival and habitation of Native peoples on the Caribbean islands, Spanish conquest, and American intervention in support of Cuban anti-colonial fighters. The natural history of the island is an essential part of any of these human histories. Similarly, picture using the piece of anthracite coal to explore the exploitation of natural resources, industrial development, the politics of energy, and labor struggles. Indeed, each one of “Teddy’s rocks” is exploding with interpretive possibilities. If given the opportunity, a good park ranger could make these connections come alive for visitors.

As we struggle on a global scale to understand the long cycles of climate change and the consequences of human use and misuse of resources, this kind of interpretive shift may be not only intriguing but essential. For me, it is Roosevelt’s history--as both conservationist and historian--that encourages thinking in this way. Speaking in Jamestown, Virginia in 1907--another appropriate location for thinking about the intersections of human and environmental histories--Roosevelt said, “The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.”[1] For Roosevelt, the “environment” or “nature” did not exist separately from American society. He understood that human history and natural history are inextricably linked.

~ Will Walker

[1] H. Paul Jeffers, The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1998), 30. See also, Douglas Brinkley, Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 691-692.

* Many thanks to editor Cathy Stanton for some excellent wordsmithing on this piece.

Witnessing "history"?

3...2...1... We have lift off! Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off for her final voyage on July 8, marking the end of NASA’s 30-year old shuttle program, and I was there. Honestly, it is bigger on TV. But television doesn’t adequately capture the physical sensation of participation.

The feeling of excitement was palpable, beginning when we checked into the hotel. There was the child clutching his planet-covered pillow, the students wearing their Georgia Tech Aerospace Engineering tee shirts, the news crew with their giant cameras, and us (my parents, sister, brother-in-law, five-year-old nephew, and a good friend from college). Only a few hours later, the wake up call came and bleary eyed we rendezvoused in the elevator just before 3:00 a.m. to head to the Kennedy Space Center. There was traffic. There were lines for security. There were lines for admission. Then we were there.

Clutching our tickets for the 4:45 a.m. breakfast with an astronaut, it began to sink in. We were taking part in a historic event...or at least that’s how the news kept billing it. As someone who was there, I’m not sure that would be the adjective I’d use.

Let’s back up for some perspective. I am part of the shuttle generation. The first shuttle launched in 1981 when I was five--right when permanent memories start forming (that's me, age seven, in the middle of the photo at the left, at NASA in Houston). I clearly remember the Challenger explosion, or more accurately, Mr. Baker (the elementary school principal) running through the halls yelling for the teachers to turn off the televisions. We were all ready to watch the first teacher in space, but suddenly it was silent and we were all sent home to have our parents explain what we had just witnessed.

I briefly toyed with the idea of rocket science when considering colleges, but space had become a bit pedestrian. It was no longer news to watch a shuttle launch. With the exception of identifying Orion in the night sky, I didn’t think much about space, but I also didn’t realize how much the shuttle program was still a part of me. I was in graduate school when Columbia was lost during reentry. Pairing Challenger and Columbia seemed like a no-brainer for a history of science and technology lesson. Most of the students couldn’t care less. They were not children of the shuttle program.

When President Bush canceled the shuttle program and President Obama cut NASA’s budget, I didn’t think too much about the implications of space exploration. But when NASA announced the end of the shuttle launches, I knew it was my last chance to participate in shuttle festivities, and I knew I wanted to be there.

And so I found myself waiting for hours, surrounded by thousands of other space enthusiasts, anticipating the end of an era. It feels strange, as a historian, to be marking an historic event in the present. My fellow shuttle watchers didn’t share the sentiment. They had nothing but hope and excitement and a feeling of privilege (and maybe a bit of luck) to take part in the event.

Most of the day had the atmosphere of an oddly subdued party. Even the most amateur meteorologist could look at the clouds in the sky and see there was a good chance the launch would be canceled, so we all just milled about, looking at exhibits at the visitor complex, silently hoping that everything would be all right, and following the live feed from NASA.

Former astronauts were on the stage sharing their experiences as the crew went through their final checklist. As it got closer to launch time, Ground Control began giving thanks to all of the men and women who had made the 30 years of the shuttle program possible. Misty-eyed patriots cheered at each remembrance. The crowd gave a collective shout of joy at T minus five minutes, T minus three minutes, T minus one minute. Then, at T minus 31 seconds, someone ordered a hold. I don’t think anyone in the crowd took a breath. We just waited. It had to go up. It just had to. Countdown resumed, and the crowd started chanting. Five...four...three...two...one...and then...nothing.

We were all at the visitors center complex, which is eight miles from the launch pad with a line of trees blocking the horizon. We knew it would take a few seconds before we would see the shuttle, but I don’t think anyone thought those seconds would be so interminable. Then someone shouted, and the crowd surged forward, and you could see the trail of fire through the sky. The shuttle popped into the clouds, reemerged moments later, and was then lost to the clouds for good. A successful launch.

Hours of waiting for seconds of viewing. Is this what it looks like to see history as it unfolds? I’m a bit of a skeptic. Despite the fact that I now own the official launch program, have bought a lanyard for my grand finale launch ticket (shown at left), and mailed some commemorative covers to my Postal Museum friends, I’m left unconvinced by the historic nature of the event.

Don’t get me wrong. It was fabulous, and a memory I will hold dearly. But is it history? Regardless of what the souvenir merchandise available in the gift shop claims, I don’t think we will know for several decades. I believe that determining the historic-ness of this final shuttle launch depends on the future. Is this the moment America hands over manned space flight to Russia? Is this the beginning of an even stronger international collaboration with the space station? Is this the necessary cut needed to jump forward to deeper space exploration and potential travel to Mars? Or does this launch mark a turning point where American society looks internally towards its own planet rather than dreaming of space?

What are the responsibilities of public historians or historians of science and technology or the media or simply space enthusiasts to mark an event and call it history? What material culture should we save, what memories should we document, what stories should we perpetuate?

~ Allison Marsh

Classified past

The summer TV season is just around the corner, and I can’t wait. It’s a guilty pleasure that I don’t usually brag about to my academic colleagues, but I adore summer TV. Summer television, like beach reading, is supposed to be entertaining – romance and intrigue without the burden of a challenging plotline. For me, last summer’s dark horse winner on the television turned out to be USA’s Covert Affairs. I admit up front that the plot is ridiculous: I know that curators at the Smithsonian (the main character’s cover story) do not fly back and forth to the British Museum regularly, and I am skeptical that all the women at the CIA come to work dressed in cocktail attire, but the show hooked me in Episode 2 when the Agency had to grab a machine from the CIA Museum in order to decode information being transmitted through an old Cold War radio transmission station.

Ridiculous, right? Well, somewhere in Hollywood there is a historian with a sense of humor who is getting the facts (mostly) right. The CIA does have a museum, although I bet it is a stretch to believe that current intelligence officers are using its collections today for active assignments, right?

Actually, it is not a stretch at all. According to Museum officials, the Agency workforce does consult with the museum periodically on technical lessons learned from operational applications of some of the historical items held in the collection. Any current intelligence officer worth his or her salt knows the importance of learning from the past. What better place to do so than in the museum!

Ever since I learned about the CIA Museum, I’ve been intrigued. The museum is not open to the public (you need to be pre-screened to gain admittance to Langley, and even then you are under strict escort), yet it has a very high visitation level from CIA employees and dignitaries. Besides the problem of access, much of the museum’s collection is classified, which can complicate the exhibit design process. Who knew you needed government clearance to be a collections manager?

But the intrepid team at the CIA Museum is determined to reach the public. They are currently in the process of redesigning their website. They have partnered with other institutions and would like to develop traveling exhibits. They are working to draft a collections plan that conforms to American Association of Museum standards (too bad AAM doesn’t have a deaccessioning policy for classified objects). And of course, they are reaching out to couch potatoes like myself through popular television programs. Technically, that last bit isn’t true. It is the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs that liaises with the media. The CIA Museum does not unilaterally reach out to tv producers.

I love it when museums show up on TV (Bones, Warehouse 13, White Collar), but I wonder if museum professionals should be a bit more proactive in describing what we actually do. We all have such great jobs, and all of our cultural institutions have fabulous objects with wonderful, made for Hollywood stories. We just need to get our own story out. I propose that the National Council on Public History develop an “Ask the Public Historian” call center with a direct line to Hollywood so that we can do a bit of professional activism. Plus my mom would love it if I could win an Emmy.

The new season of Covert Affairs begins tonight.

~ Allison Marsh

The history in kidlit

When I was a kid, I spent most of my time in the nineteenth century. It all started with the "Little House" books. My grandmother read them to me, and they became the very first chapter books that I could read all by myself. From there, it was just a hop, skip and jump to Little Women, All-of-a-Kind Family, A Little Princess, and Anne of Green Gables.

Yet, there were so many things in those books that I just didn't understand. What was consumption and cholera? Why were puffed sleeves such a big deal? What did the food taste like? Why was Sara Crewe in India? What’s this Great War they keep talking about? There's one key thing that all of these books have in common: they are either semi-autobiographical or they were written as contemporary and, over time, have become historical fiction. Either way, they're an important source in learning about history--a source that most historians have ignored. To me, they should be considered in much the way memoirs or oral history are considered--perhaps not true in every detail, but more true than not.

By the time I got to college, I was convinced that I was going to be an English major and become a writer. Then, I got an internship at the Dallas Historical Society, going through their archives and writing educational curriculum. It took me almost another year to admit that I was really a historian, which surprised me at the time. Perhaps it shouldn't have--I had already spent most of my childhood in the past.

As I began to dive into the study of history, I began to make all sorts of random connections between the history I was studying and the books I had loved as a child. I kept returning to one book in particular, Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery. Set during World War I and published in 1921, it’s one of the few novels about the home front. Recently, a new edition of this classic was published in Canada. Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie have put together a wonderful edition, complete with introduction, timeline, glossary of events, and some World War I poetry. It beautifully sets the story in its historical context. When I first read this book, I had so many questions about World War I, and it took years to find the answers. But now, all of those answers are in one beautiful package!

If I had to pick just one book to explain my whole thesis about kidlit history--that there is some history that is found in children's literature and can't be found anywhere else--this book would be the one I would pick. Primary sources on the emotions and daily lives of the women that watched and waited are hard to find. We tend to document the extraordinary. Though these women were living in extraordinary times, I don't think they realized how much their lives were changing.

Montgomery knew she was telling the story of the masses of Canadian women that worked at home and waited. She wrote "In my latest story, 'Rilla of Ingleside,' I have tried, as far as in me lies, to depict the fine and splendid way in which the girls of Canada reacted to the Great War--their bravery, patience and self-sacrifice. The book is theirs in a sense in which none of my other books have been: for my other books were written for anyone who might like to read them: but 'Rilla' was written for the girls of the great young land I love, whose destiny it will be their duty and privilege to shape and share." In their introduction, Lefebvre and McKenzie write "Rilla of Ingleside thus pictures, as no other war novel of its time does, a uniquely Canadian perspective about the women and families who battled to keep the home fires burning throughout this tumultuous era." Montgomery was a historian, even though her books are always shelved with children’s literature.

In my current job as a museum educator, I'm pulling children's literature in whenever and wherever I can. Using books that kids or adults are familiar with is a wonderful way to make connections with history. And in talking with colleagues, I know I’m not the only one that can trace a love of history back to literature first discovered as a child. In the last couple of years, I’ve started paying more attention to the threads of history woven through these books, and it’s been a fascinating journey. If you’re interested in coming along, please join me on my blog.

~ Melissa Prycer

Guest blogger Melissa Prycer has a MA in Public History. She is currently the Director of Education at Dallas Heritage Village. This piece was cross-published with the National Council on Public History's June 2011 newsletter.