Public History

The Simpson Lot of Arcadia Mill is an antebellum industrial site in Northwest Florida that was inhabited by five population groups—none of whom left a particularly discernible material trace. In this study, game theory, the study of strategic and dynamic interactions, is tested as means to interpret a site where historic and material evidence is lacking. Game theory methods can help to enhance our understanding of ephemeral sites like the Simpson Lot by deconstructing and reorganizing data to incorporate broader, and perhaps better understood, historical or contextual patterns, and then predict possible site-specific activities that produced the material outcome recovered through excavations. A series of State Against Nature (SONAT) vector diagrams use regional and local patterns to augment archaeological, geophysical, and Geographic Information System (GIS) evidence. Results facilitate the creation of a multi-scalar data network and the subsequent identification of the living quarters of two female overseers at an antebellum textile mill. Although specific information about their lifestyle remains unseen, this previously untested approach successfully analyzes enigmatic and faint patterns in the material record.

This article explores some French Canadian (Québec) students’ historical consciousness of the nation through the lens of Social Identity Theory (SIT). Informed by SIT principles, our narrative analysis shows how most Franco-Québécois categorize the past in homogenous categories (e.g., the imperialist Anglophone; the surviving Francophone) and frame their stories into particular modes of present-day orientations. Implications of this study for history education are also discussed.

""As a part of a wider project focusing the study of the discourses over the city of Santiago de Compostela, Galiza, and the pilgrimage trough its different trails, we have tried to elaborate for
specific application to the study of touristic phenomenon the concept of  “sustainable identity.”
Besides the theoretical concept, explored by my colleague Elias J. Torres Feijó, my paper aims to study, through the specific case of Compostela, the possibility of elaborating a range of parameters
useful for measuring the sustainability degree of the identity of a given  community, taking into considerations the different aspects involved, from the perceptions of the insiders to the vision of
the foreigners, using both statistical tools and qualitative analysis.
Our goal is to know at what extent and in what specific ways tourism, and the interaction between locals and tourists, as well as their respective expectations interfere with the building process of local identity, the items selected for  its construction and the  dynamic definition of identity boundaries between communities.
For the aforementioned purpose we have developed a framework that establishes the items that, in our opinion, set  ground for identifying and measuring the degree  of sustainability of the
identity of a community. Among them, we have selected three that we would explore in this paper through the data already collected by the research team:
a) The narratives that posses a wider potential range and influence, dealing with aspects of identity: legal texts, textbooks, institutional and government hierarchies and structures, as well as
cultural institutions, exploring the elements used to set identity.
b) The discourses expressed through products outletted as community specific and proper items (as literary texts, documentaries, websites...).
c) The comparison between external and internal images, analyzing if the items and hierarchies match in both sides of the identity boundary, expressed through interviews conducted
with tourists and visitants in the town of Santiago de Compostela. ""

This essay uses Steven Conn’s recent book Do Museums Still Need Objects?, as a jumping-off point for considering seven major issues currently confronting history museums and historic sites as they seek to make their collections meaningful, relevant, and accessible for a general audience.

The aim of this paper is to explore French Canadian (Québec) students‘ historical consciousness of the nation through the lens of Social Identity Theory (SIT). Relying on a sample of 142 Québec‘s historical narratives written by Francophone Québécois students, the paper revisits findings from a previous study on the historical consciousness of young Québécois. Informed by SIT principles, our narrative analysis shows how most Franco-Québécois categorize the past in homogenous categories (e.g., the imperialist Anglophone; the surviving Francophone) and frame their stories into particular modes of present-day orientations. Implications of this study for history education are also discussed.

Criticized for ignoring or misrepresenting slavery, some docents at plantation house museums have responded by including more references to slavery, but rarely move beyond mere factual references of the enslaved. This contrasts with the emotionally evocative accounts tourists hear about the planter-class family. We refer to this disparity as affective inequality. At plantation house museums, affective inequality is created and reproduced through specific spatial and narrative practices by tour guides. By retracing docent-led tours at Destrehan Plantation, Louisiana, this article engages, conceptually and empirically, with the concept of affective inequality — how it contributes to the marginalization of the history of the enslaved community, and how it becomes reproduced within the practices of tour guides at plantation house museums in the Southern US.

Avant que des faits, l’histoire est composée des représentations de ces faits. Ce constat prend une dimension particulière dans le contexte de la Russie actuelle, où la problématique des usages politiques du passé se lie, de plus en plus étroitement, à celle de la construction de l’identité nationale. Afin d’éclairer l’entreprise de réévaluation de l’histoire soviétique lancée par le pouvoir actuel, le regard est porté sur le manuel scolaire d’histoire – un élément incontournable dans la construction des représentations de soi et de l’autre, l’un des vecteurs principaux de socialisation. L’analyse des manuels scolaires traitant de l’histoire de la période soviétique parus récemment fait ressortir trois tendances dominantes dans le récit historique actuel : l’atténuation des “pages sombres”, la reconstruction de la continuité historique et la forte dimension patriotique, ces trois éléments semblant construire une base de la nouvelle identité nationale russe.

"The 1312 charter of Cortenberg is not part of the collective memory in modern and contemporary Walloon Brabant. The town of Nivelles was the most likely to develop such a memory, being the only town from the area to delegate a member in the late medieval Council of Cortenberg as well as –until 1995- the historical chief city of Walloon Brabant. Nevertheless, it did not. During the Brabantine Revolution (late 18th C.), the charter of Cortenberg was not alluded to as a polical argument and later, in the 19th-21st C., it played no role in the local historical culture. Two explanations may be found to this situation.
The southern, French-speaking, part of the late medieval Duchy of Brabant weighed little in terms of politics, economy and demography as compared to the Dutch-speaking part. The political culture of the Duchy was predominantly Dutch-speaking. Not a single Walloon acted as a representative of the towns in the Council established in 1312 by the so-called Charter of Cortenberg, albeit four Walloon cities or boroughs had been present at the scealing. Only 20 years later, the city of Nivelles was allowed to sent a representative to the Council. From then on, he was the only Walloon urban member in this Council. As we see, the historical facts did not offer any glorious place for Nivelles in a Brabantine narrative. The role of the city, although real, remained a minor one.
A second explanation lies in the existence of an alternative memory, that was cultivated by local elites and that revealed to be by far more powerful. In the 19th-21st C. the town landscape is dominated by its Collegiate Church, the remnent of the Chapter suppressed during the French Period (1798) and of the abbey founded by S. Gertrud. It was the founding abbess (whose father was the direct ancestor of the Carolingians), the old Chapter and the successive abbesses ruling the City that the local population commemorated, not the subversive communal autonomy or the Brabantine realm. This appears very clearly on several interconnected occassions : the 1930 historical pageant celebrating Hundred Years of Belgian Independance, the annual procession of S. Gertrud, the processional Giants as featured in the reality as well as heroes in the dialectal litterature, the various administrative, commercial and touristic uses of the past in the city, the local historical vulgarisation. In this way, Nivelles was not seen as a second-rank town but indeed fancied itself as the cradle of the Carolingian dynasty.
Consequently, Nivelles did not emphasize the municipal autonomy or the intra-urban Brabantine solidarity against the authority, but a very local solidarity built around the old feudal power of the abbess. Even today, in a secularised world, this configuration remains. In Nivelles, the collective memory of the Ancien Régime is oriented towards the intra muros and not towards the Duchy of which the City was part. Even in a « simplified » way, this configuration of memory is still today the support of a strong local identity."

This paper evaluates the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games as an exercise in public history. Public events have been widely identified within the study of nationalism as festivals that attempt to reinforce national identity and belonging. Contemporary Olympic Games figure in this literature as a specific form of event where the nature and content of a host state's identity is displayed for the global gaze of other nations. While opening ceremonies perform a rich display of national identity in any case, London 2012 is particularly significant for taking place at a time of major political contestation in the UK and has frequently been interpreted as an expression of radical patriotism. Traces of such patriotic thought associated particularly with England can be found in the opening ceremony's historical pageant and overall concept, showing resonances with the work of Raphael Samuel, who argued for a radical patriotism grounded in a multiplicity of accounts of the national past from many social positions. Depicting the nation through a multiplicity of biographical narratives produces a ‘mosaic’ mode of representation which can be seen in other documentary and public history projects and in the political context of British public multiculturalism in the 2000s. This responds to the need for any national narrative to be composed through compressing the lives of millions of people into one coherent story, but complicates attempts to read a text such as the opening ceremony for what they ‘really’ mean. A model for understanding narratives of the past as being produced in interaction between their initial creator(s) and their reader(s) is necessary for understanding not only the London 2012 opening ceremony in particular but also public history and narratives of the national past in general.

Comment les gens ordinaires résument-ils leur histoire nationale en quelques phrases ? Ce texte propose des pistes de réponse à cette question. Nous avons effectué une première analyse des résultats d’une enquête menée auprès de 5 425 adultes dans six pays d’Europe et d’Amérique – la France, l’Écosse, le Pays de Galles, l’Angleterre, les États-Unis et le Canada. À travers ces six pays, deux trames historiales se dégagent et recueillent un nombre similaire d’adhérents. La majorité des gens sondés par l’enquête résument leur histoire nationale par la trame de l’adversité et du déclin ou par celle de la réussite et du progrès.

""Sistershow Revisited uses the antics of Bristol-based theatre group Sistershow to tell the history of feminism in Bristol from 1973-1975.

Based on the Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition of the same name, it contains photographs, archival material, original articles and commentary.
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