History as Song

History is often associated with the textual and physical past, focusing on the evidence of artefacts and documents to reconstruct times gone by. This is, in fact, what I understood it to be as well, starting as I did from Anthropology and moving into English and then History. What I discovered along the way was a love for legends and mythologies, and the oral traditions that created them. What this interest convinced me of was that there is another way to look at history: through stories.

Before the Greek city-states were at their zenith of cultural achievement, the Celtic tribes dominated Western Europe. Little evidence remains of their tribal life — their social structures and belief systems are fragmentary and mysterious — but their rich culture has echoed through the centuries and is still influential today. To recreate the Celtic world of the misty past, we must turn to their legends and mythologies to unveil their mysteries. Unlike the Roman Empire, which was a strongly visual culture and used awe-inspiring art and architecture to communicate to the diverse cultures and languages they controlled, I believe that the ancient Celts used their songs and legends as forms of communication and education. The Celtic tribes once stretched from the Balkans to Ireland, and they had a lasting impact on the develpoment of Europe that is often overlooked by the seemingly higher culture of Greece and Rome. Celtic tribes were eventually defeated by these emerging strengths; however, the survival of the Celtic culture indicates an enduring method of recording their history. Mythological figures, gods, and legendary exploits surviving in the Celtic realms of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales can demonstrate a common past that through the retelling has become the stuff of fiction.

As historians, public historians, and seekers of heritage, I believe that knowing about the past includes knowing about how the people in the past viewed their own history. How a culture communicates its collective memory is an integral part of their social identity. Listening to the song of the past can give vital clues as to how we should interpret it. Some archives and historians are now recognizing that "history" is not just the written past, but the oral past as well. The University of Dundee in Scotland has a course (as part of regular archives program or as professional development) that teaches how to preserve oral culture in an archival setting.

Legends and mythologies are stories of the past - ones that must be heard in order for us to know how various cultures saw their place in the history of their people.

Roy Rosenzweig’s Scavenger Hunt

Digital History Assignment 2 for September 19, 2007

1. A recording of Leon Trotsky speaking in English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7r4zpUEpog

2. 1915 suffrage poem with the line: When all the women wanted it.
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Bistro/8066/ADMsuffrage.html

3. A letter from George Washington to Timothy Pickering in which Washington complains about "certain forged letters" intended to wound his character and "deceive the people."
http://books.google.ca/books?id=OLiLJsfyrMoC&pg=PA420&dq=certain+forged+letters+intended+to+wound+his+character+and+%22deceive+the+people.%22

4. An 18th century speech by Willie Lynch telling Virginia slave owners how to keep slaves in line.
http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/wil.html

5. An online debate over whether the 1962 Cuban crisis would have been different if Kruschev had sent a fair sized contingent of Russian troops instead of missiles.
I could not find this one. :(

6. A complete version of "Annual Review of Information Technology Developments for Economic and Social Historians, 1993" in The Economic History Review by Roger Middleton and Peter Wardley (one of first publications for historians to talk about Internet).
Found in JSTOR
http://www.jstor.org.proxy2.lib.uwo.ca:2048/view/00130117/di011843/01p01475/0?currentResult=00130117%2bdi011843%2b01p01475%2b0%2cFFFFFFFF&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FAdvancedResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26q0%3DAnnual%2BReview%2Bof%2BInformation%2BTechnology%2BDevelopments%2Bfor%2BEconomic%2Band%2BSocial%2BHistorians%26f0%3D%26c0%3DAND%26q1%3DEconomic%2BHistory%2BReview%26f1%3D%26c1%3DAND%26wc%3Don%26sd%3D1993%26ed%3D1993%26la%3D

7. Four syllabi for courses that include Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/sts145/html/Syllabus2003.htm
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/interpret.html
http://www.units.muohio.edu/englishtech/ENG49502/ENG495syll02.htm
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/6210_syl.html

8. The home page for the Center for History & New Media as it looked in 1998.
I am not sure if this one is right…
http://chnm.gmu.edu/index.php

After using the Internet Archives' really interesting search tool, the 'Wayback Machine', I would like to revise my answer to:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980419060247/http://chnm.gmu.edu/

The only drawback to this tool is that you have to know the URL of the site you are looking for. So, if it ever changed its URL address, you can not search by subject or title, and it would make finding the old site very difficult.

9. A picture of Janet Murray together with the Sims.
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://homepage.mac.com/voyager/images/janetmurray.jpg&imgrefurl=http://voyager.blogs.com/voyeurism/educational_technology/index.html&h=489&w=652&sz=274&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=3lUZ0emIuw2WAM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djanet%2Bmurray%2Bsims%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

I actually really enjoyed this exercise. It let me realise that I do have some search skills, while also showing me that there is much, much more for me to learn. I know that I will never be able to understand everything about the Internet or computers (I never actually figured out exactly what a 'SIMS' was), but I am feeling better every day about the elastic nature of my brain to take in, and maybe even understand, something of what we are doing in realtion to my age-old enemy, the computer.

Archivists: those curious creatures

For everyone who has ever wondered what an archive is and how it is run and were too afraid to ask, here is a wonderful video put together by Bob Stewart in 1990 to help explain what an archive is and how it is organised. It's a fun and hilarious video, I really recommend watching it, and he was one of the best archivists in the field. The B.C. Conference of the United Church of Canada is actually naming their archives the Bob Stewart Archives after this remarkable man. Here is his video:


http://www.bc.united-church.ca/archives/Bob_Stewart/index.htm

Enjoy!

What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?

The truth of what really happened to the dinosaurs has been conjectured and postulated upon for decades by every dino-loving professional and hobbyist. There's the comet theory, the slow elimination theory, the creationist theory, and so many many more. One I read recently was that it was the unexpected arrival of the flower with its odious flaunting of flavours that threw the veggies off of their feed, and as they slowly wasted away, it then left little to be desired for the carnivorous diet - don't worry folks, it was in a fictitious field that I read this. But it brings up an interesting point. What is it about new arrivals that throws us off so quickly? Because it is not just dinosaurs, people are always suspicious at first of things they do not understand. This has been the consistent theme in our readings this week for Digital History.
The advance of the Internet as an historical source has been contested at almost every new development. To the computer-savvy group, it has been a positive change; for those less inclined to the techno-world, it has been for the worst, with constant ever-evolving changes and horrible new developments. Change rarely smells good to those not used to its scent. I have to admit that I am somewhere in the middle. I am of the generation that should know computers, but I don't. I can go through the motions and generally keep afloat, but I never really understand. And I am sure we all know from our humanities background, that we fear what we do not understand. I think the Internet allows history to reach millions of people that would never have been able to before, which is great. Knowledge should not be hoarded. But, I do feel sorry for the old school scholars who are being thrown off their over-used metaphor of an ivory tower and made to go the way of the dinosaur. Can we not have the best of both worlds? And I understand about the "old making way for the new," but don't we lose something valuable in the process? Like dinosaurs? That could have been fun - T-Rex's for the army, pterodactyls for transportation, dino eggs for breakfast...I kid!
Cohen and Rosenzweig say in Promises and Perils of Digital History that "instantaneous access to primary and secondary sources - the ability to very quickly make and test out intellectual connections - will likely alter historical research and writing in ways that we haven't yet imagined." And that's the thing: we do not know the full ramifications of the Internet and blogs and digitised sources. We never do with any kind of new development. I think the lesson that we can take from history (and from the dinos) is that balance is key. Just in case the Internet and computers end up being our asteroid in some Terminator-style future, we need to still try and preserve the original documents and artefacts that are so important to our historical identity.
Don't fear the flower, but be aware that it may cause indigestion.

What did I create?

Apparently I created a blog. Having no idea what a blog is, this comes as a bit of a surprise.