Author: derosag

Although Jan Gross’ Neighbors and Pawlikowski’s Ida  both speak to similar events surrounding the destruction and murder of Jewish communities perpetrated by Christian Poles during WWII, I beleive that Ida politicizes the issue in a way that Jan Gross purposely avoided in order to retain academic objectivity. The intent of Neighbors was to bring light to the fact that it was indeed communities of Christian Poles that had carried out town massacres of entire Jewish populations (sometimes) even before the Nazis had arrived to lay territorial claims after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and to make sure that Poland was able to constructively deal with its complicit past in a legitimate way. Ida, on the other hand, seems more concerned with the depth that religion is integrated into Polish culture and naming specific persons responsible and holding them accountable on an individual and societal level.

Ida herself is Jewish and even after we follow her during a “coming of age” style narrative she still chooses to remain in the nunnery. At one point in the film, Wanda tells Ida that her vows will mean nothing if she has never sinned and therefore nothing to repent. I believe that this line could have meant to implicate the Poles who carried out the massacres and sought protection in their religious communities and the unwillingness to admit these crimes. Wanda and Ida also personally seek out the family that was responsible for the death of Ida’s parents and brother in order to come to terms with their loss. Wanda was also a federal judge for the Soviet regime after the war and eventually kills herself. The film is multifaceted and speaks to many political and social dimensions that the book doesn’t although I believe part of Gross’ intention was to foster discussion in Poland about the events that took place and that this film is one of the responses.

To be perfectly honest, my approach for tackling a research project is scatterbrained at best. When I have an idea for the topic I intend to research, I will immediately go to the library and search the catalog for relevant books and utilize the online databases to find scholarly articles. This type of research will occupy the majority of my time as I often feel the need to try and fully understand my area of study before I feel confident enough to begin the writing process. This step is often supplemented with excessive Googling to fill in any gaps.

The Methods and Skills of History workbook has certainly made me more aware of my own biases, author biases, and my reliance on secondary sources. I think it is rather easy to pick up an impressive looking book or scholarly article and blindly trust that what they are saying is true. Before this year I had also never visited the Dickinson College Archives. This class and the workbook has helped me to reevaluate and relearn the approach to scholarly research by emphasizing primary sources, independent original research, and critical thinking.

As Milligan points out during Napoleon’s transformation of the French National Archives, the Archives themselves would become an important institution for the maintenance of not only the State but the social contract it held with its citizens. The transition of the National Archives reflected the gap in where the interests of the state and the interests of the public lied. The archives became a repository for various judicial, administrative, and legal documents and along with that came a restriction to public access. Milligan posits that this restriction set a new line of demarcation for democracy and state-citizen power relations especially in regard to limiting the average citizen and their ability to question state doctrine and contest it through gathering available evidence. Indeed, this new separation of historical science and government administration, “. . . would threaten not just the institution, but the legitimacy of the state as well”(177).

While Milligan’s work explores how a Nation can literally define its identity and construct a narrative for the people, Ghosh gives a more personalized view as to how a persons relationship to national pride and identity can hinder and even oppose historical research if the area of study is controversial. While exploring British colonialism in India and the interracial relationships that were formed, Ghosh received criticism about not only her academic integrity for choosing this specific topic but also experienced attacks on her gender and moral fiber. Native archivists were uninterested and unhelpful and recommended historical nationalist fiction as opposed to legitimate documentation.  Archives and the people who control and use them are central to the creation of national narratives and power because they control the flow of information about the political, social, economic, etc. history of a state and what their true intentions and interests are.

A single drop of water in a dry lake bed may not contribute to filling up a lake but a large thunderstorm has the potential to flood the lake. I believe Dickinson could contribute to the construction of a nation much in the same way. As a single drop of rain or source of information Dickinson could potentially provide information about a burgeoning nation after the Revolutionary War or U.S. relations to the Native American population a la the Carlisle Indian School. As a source for local information that can be weaved in to a larger national narrative I believe the Dickinson College Archive can contribute to nation building.