The Osborne Center for Historical Methods

So I’m sitting in good old Waidner Spahr Library, working on some final things for my Historiography (for Pinsker’s 304). I was going to tweet something about one of my sources, then I wondered how much any of my friends would actually care. At that point, I remembered that I have never actually written anything on this blog about any history work I’ve done. So here I am.

My historiography is about the formation of Clinton’s legacy, the reliance on oral history in many works about his life, and the emphasis – fairly or not – on the Lewinsky scandal over his political career. (It is worth noting that my title incorporates both of these facts, and is, in my mind, hilarious.) One of my sources is called The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. If it sounds pretty bold, that’s because it is. It’s easily the most slanted of the works I’m using in my paper. In the context of my other sources it fits nicely though.

What astonished me about this source was not that there are such ardent Clinton defenders out there or anything like that, but that of all of the great books and sources that exist on this remarkable and complex president, this work is the only one to have been made into a movie. In our 304 we have talked a good deal about the importance of movies and history, and in the capacity of media creating a legacy for a president, movies are undoubtably very powerful. Now this is not a Saving Private Ryan or Pearl Harbor or anything like that, but it was still interesting – if not necessarily surprising – that of all the books, this was the one that got the movie deal.

If the library internet was any better than awful, I could watch the trailer and see what the movie is like, but alas, it is not to be. It’s probably for the best, though. I still have other work to do.

TvA

This past weekends events were very well put together and organized despite the obstacles mother nature had brought.  The kickoff event to the weekend on Friday night did a good job of showing off the hard work that a handful of the individuals who worked on the project had done.  I felt it was much more a showcase of civil war history than anything else.  The most interesting event I found to be the teacher’s workshop on Saturday morning.  I have used the House Divided website on and off for the past three years and just to see and have all of it’s capabilities explained really impressed me.  I was also impressed with the teachers at the workshop.  They asked questions that I could connect with as I am in an Education class about ESL students and the one man expressed his feelings on how the House Divided website can be an effective tool in his classroom by using the available maps and voice recordings.  I was very impressed with the enitre weekends activities from the vast amounts of information that Prof. Osborne and Prof. Pinsker exerted on their groups in the Old Courthouse to the celebration of the Civil Wars 150th Anniversary at the Carlisle Theater.

All of the events at the House Divided launch this past weekend were impressive in and of themselves. The amount of people who showed up to the movie festival Friday night and the teacher workshop Saturday morning, both from local areas and across the country, represented the excitement generated by this new research tool.

I was particularly impressed by the walking tours at the Old Courthouse and the David Blight lecture Saturday night. Although the weather impacted the walking tour experience, it was still fascinating to see how technology will be used in presenting the history behind specific sites in Carlisle. I think that this new way of looking at the town could generate a lot of interest in its role in the Civil War.

Blight’s lecture on memory and the Civil War was the most interesting part of the weekend, for me. I enjoyed hearing his explanations as to why the Civil War plays such a large role in public memory 150 years after it began. Blight provided his own hypotheses, but most importantly, he left the audience to reflect on what he suggested, and think about their own ideas.

I enjoyed all the events for the house divided weekend launch. I thought that all of th events were very successful espicially considering the weather. To me the most successful event was the film festival. I though that the differecnt combination of singing, and plying civil war time music, and the films made the festival different and added to the success. I though that as far as the films themselves were concerned all three were very well done. It showed the new kind of technology that we are working on here and how they can be used to help students learn. I though that the voice over process went incredibly well and I like that it was not always one voice. The films also looked more professional then I though they would look. My only critique of the films would be that sometimes, the captions that came up would be to small or would flash away too quickly before I had time to read them. Also sometimes I felt as though the videos would drag on a little to long. Its important to get your information to the audience but also do it in a way that does not drag out the point your trying to make. I also found the saturday morning teacher workshop to be useful. As someone who wants to be a teacher, I liked that after using most of the tools on House Divided I got to see how I could use them in a classroom setting. One thing that really stuck to me was when the explanation of word clouds came up, and a particular teacher said to any of the students who are education majors/minors using word clouds is great for ESL students. This spoke close to be as I am learning about how to make content more manageable for ESl students. So that connection he made was greatly appreciated.

I feel as though the house divided launch succeeded in gaining public interest and opening the door to a creative and unique way to marry technology and history. The film festival, the digital tour, and the David Blight lecture on why the Civil War remains in our memory were all fitting testaments to why the Civil War will not only remain relevant but will be reinvented in an exciting manner for people to study and research.

The most compelling and interesting part of the weekend was definitely the digital tour demonstration at the old courthouse. Despite the weather, the glimpse into what the future holds for experiencing the Civil War in a digital way and its unique presentation of information to the public was exciting. The application was not over cumbersome and had an interface that was easy to use and efficiently displayed all relevant information associated with the topic. Coupled with the ability to directly overlay pictures of Civil War Carisle, it was a great tool at capturing public interest.

With the current technology rapidly progressing and our knowledge of Carlisle in the Civil War growing, the pairing of these two holds exciting prospects for future students, teachers and historians. The guided tour demonstration proved technologies ability to completely reinvent how information is perceived, and how it can completely reinvigorate the mundane stigma associated with historical tours. The amount of information that provided and the ease of its accessibility, now literally in your hands, gives new life to a heavily observed subject. I personally am greatly interested to see the extent of how interactive and submersing this technology will bring us into the history of the Civil War.

I think the first thing that should be said about this past weekend is that, despite the rain, it was very successful. There are two aspects that I would like to touch on in this post. The first is the teacher workshop on saturday morning and the second is David Blight’s lecture.

Regarding the teaching workshop, what stood out to me was the general enthusiasm of the teachers involved. Actually getting to see the most up to date version of the database in action was quite an experience. I’m 20 years old, and a junior in college, but I’m also not so far removed from my days of high school that I can’t remember what its like. Frankly, part of me envies the k-12 students who will get to use this new database in the classroom. I was fortunate enough to discover history and become fascinated by it at an early age, but I know plenty of my peers who didn’t like history because it resembled simply a collection of dates and facts. What the house divided database does is make history accessible for everyone who uses it. This is important simply to generate interest and to bring history into classrooms as more than readings from textbooks.

Regarding the Blight lecture, I thought it was captivating. More than anything it has caused me to think about the ways in which the civil war has made inroads into popular culture. This is popular memory as Blight was speaking of – the ways in which we remember and experience it on a regular basis. I think one of the most remarkable is the way the idea of the “southern legend” or “mythology” has lived on in music. This is particularly true of the second half of the 20th century. Some artists reference the war literally in one or more of their songs (Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr and Steve Earle) These songs by these artists vary between celebratory and sorrowful. Others approach the topic through some symbols but do not talk about the war itself. Bands such as Alabama many others do this using the flag, tunes reminiscent of Confederate music (especially Dixie). What I think this illustrates, is that, not only does our country continue to remember the war, but it is remembered differently by different people, and that music illustrates this point as clearly as any other aspect of popular culture.