History 204, Fall 2015

Author: mccarcal

Neighbors and Ida: A Comparison

October 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Reflection by Caly McCarthy

In large part I see Neighbors and Ida as compliments to the same story, just focusing on different scales. In this sense, they do tell different stories, but they trend in the same direction; Poles committed heinous crimes against their Jewish neighbors without acknowledgement from the wider world.

Gross challenges the victim status of Poland when he asserts that individual citizens willfully participated in the pogrom against the Jews of Jedwabne. This narrative lent itself to a national identity crisis as more and more towns were shown to mirror the pattern of Jedwabne, and the reality became known that neighbors killed neighbors, not under the threat of totalitarian leaders, but by their own volition.

Ida, on the other hand, examines the story of one family.  It surveys the legacy of pain caused by the mass murder of Jews, as experienced as an affront to personal identity. On the eve of taking her vows to become a Catholic nun, Ida learns that she is Jewish, and that her family had been killed by its neighbors for their religious identity.

One apparent difference between Neighbors and Ida was the reticence for locals to speak out regarding what they witnessed/participated in.  According to Gross, there was a wide-spread awareness in Poland about citizen-led pogroms, even if it was not widely known outside Polish borders. Gross identifies a host of valuable sources that attest to this, including: Agnieszka Arnold’s documentary, Where Is My Older Brother Cain?, a memorial book of Jedwabne Jews, and records from court proceedings. In Ida, however, residents were very reluctant to even acknowledge that they knew Ida’s family, let along that they had harmed them. Perhaps this is because Ida and her aunt posed a threat to them? How, though, could they be more threatening than a court of law?

History as a Tool of Liberation

October 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Reflection by Caly McCarthy

I found Gaddis’ commentary on history as a tool of liberation to be the most significant part of his concluding chapter.  I find it compelling because it offers a “so what?” to the entire discipline of history.  Certainly history is interesting, but is it meaningful beyond the ivory tower?  According to Gaddis, it most definitely can be.

History is not a list of names and dates.  It is not merely chronology.  It often examines causality and implications – certainly more relevant, but significant?  I think that history is a powerful tool to challenge oppression, both subtle and overt.  When leaders harken back to a rosier past, historians have the capacity to break apart monoliths and represent a more nuanced understanding, speaking up for those who did not enjoy the projected past experience.  When those in power legitimize their harmful actions with the logic that “it’s always been this way,” historians can demonstrate that very little has “always been.”  This observation opens up space for different expressions of gender, beauty, family life, leadership styles, economic systems, etc.

Perhaps Gaddis says it best when he quips that “the sources of oppression are lodged in time and are not independent of time” (146).  Unlike the molecules that natural scientists are inclined to study, humans do not act in predictable manners.  Although this is frustrating to social scientists who seek clear causation to aid predictive models, this should be understood as a sign of hope; humans have the capacity change, and historians have the ability to help them recognize that.

The Difficulty of “Doing History”

September 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Reflections by Caly McCarthy

I suppose I do have a general approach to history research papers, but it’s not particularly set in stone. When I have a general topic, I normally do some background reading to become better acquainted with key names, events, dates, etc. Yes, Google is usually a first stop. That being said, I try to limit myself to .orgs and .edus. I prefer to begin with Google because scholarly works tend to assume basic knowledge of the subject, and they seem to repeat the same limited introduction, which does not serve my purposes. From the context gained by my initial searches, I then begin to posit various questions that surround that topic. Such questions usually include causation and resulting effects of a particular decision/event/trend.

Once I settle upon a general idea (or limited number of guiding questions), I turn to online databases in search of scholarly articles. I play around with various search terms, and I also rely heavily upon footnotes from the works that have been most helpful to me. In order to keep up to date on current scholarly discussion, I also try (with limited success) to use the powers of Google Scholar, to identify where my sources have been cited. This is more or less the wandering path that I take until I need to identify a clear topic and begin organizing my evidence into a workable thesis.

The material on the difficulties of “doing history” from the workbook did not entirely catch me off guard, but it did emphasize certain concerns more than I would have. For example, what’s the final word on bias? Is it something bad that good historians try to expunge from their work, or is it an admission that all scholars focus on certain parts of evidence more (for a variety of reasons), which lead them to different conclusions? I feel like bias is the four-letter word of history, but if scholars admit that every contribution is a part of the whole and not the whole itself, I don’t think “objective” work seems possible or desirable.

Additionally, these chapters portrayed the difficulty (and necessity) of working with primary sources. What to do when accounts are in opposition? How to be sure that the document wasn’t falsified? I am not accustomed to putting together a story from primary sources alone, without the guiding hand of secondary works. I suppose I could have listed these difficulties in theory, but the exercises made clear to me the struggle of rectifying differing accounts.


 

Of Archives and Nations

September 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Reflections by Caly McCarthy

This week’s readings both spoke about the importance of archives in the work of a historian, especially as they pertain to national narratives. Jennifer S. Mulligan and Durba Ghosh each examined the significance of the archives (and perhaps more importantly, the archivist), but they focused on different aspects of this vital institution.

Mulligan identifies the Archives nationales as central to the creation on France as a nation. In a rather straightforward sense, this is true because the Archives houses official documents that record proceedings of the state. These documents (transcripts of hearings, diplomatic correspondence, drafts of bills, etc.) give legitimacy to the state. Depending on the public’s access to the Archives, they also indicate the relationship between the governed and the governing.

In a more figurative sense, Ghosh argues that archives are of central importance to creating a nation by contributing to the prevailing national narrative. Ghosh articulately observes that archivists have a great deal of power over the legacy of government involvements by granting or denying access to certain documents, and by organizing sources in a particular way that encourage some connections and discourage others. She offers the example of Britain and India, and the strikingly different ways in which the two nations portray interracial marriage during British colonialism in India (pride for the British, disdain and distance for the Indians).

The Dickinson College Archives contains documents largely pertaining to the College, the lives of its founding members, and events in the greater-Carlisle area. Granted that I have had very limited interaction with the College’s Archives, I do not think that they are particularly related to the building of a nation, as far as state papers/national legitimacy goes. That being said, the College was founded by Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who believed that the nation could only succeed if its constituents were properly educated and involved in the democratic process. Perhaps this could constitute as relevant to the founding of the nation? More likely the contents of the Dickinson College Archives contribute to a small facet of a larger national narrative. Interestingly, the website of the Dickinson College Archives offers that one of its responsibilities is “maintaining the institutional memory of the entire Dickinson community.” This sounds strikingly like keeping guard over the stories that get told about the identity of a nation.

Detection and Historical Methods

September 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Reflections by Caly McCarthy

As Josephine Tey demonstrates in her detective novel, Daughter of Time, there are striking similarities between detection and historical method. The most significant of these similarities is that both processes seek a more complete understanding of something that occurred and is not fully understood/appreciated. To achieve a fuller understanding, historians and detectives examine evidence. Evidence, however, does not mean indisputable, objective truth. To the contrary, one document could be interpreted by scholars differently. In Daughter of Time, for example, Alan, his surgeon, the matron, and the nurses each offer a different reaction to the portrait of Richard III (before they know whom the picture is portraying). Often evidence comes in seemingly disparate pieces. Only upon stepping back and re-arranging the jigsaw puzzle can the investigator understand links of causation and relatedness. Frequently, one piece of evidence can send the inquirer to find another. Within the scholastic arena, this is accomplished by following the trails of footnotes. In the arena of detective work, pondering the meaning of one clue might lead to the discovery of another. For example, when Alan begins to suspect that Richard III was not the demon most texts make him out to be, he sends Brent to the British Museum in search of primary source evidence of “The Princes in the Towers.” When Brent returns with only secondary accounts, Alan decides to study the origins of the rumor and learns that Tyrell was charged with murder twenty years after the supposed deed. This does not add up. Historians and detectives are keen to notice patterns and disruptions.

Although it is helpful to notice the similarities that exist between detection and historical method, differences exist, and they too deserve examination (historians must acknowledge counter-arguments). At the surface, detection usually deals with an event that occurred within the very recent past, whereas historical work finds its domain reaching further back. Additionally, detective work tends to be more definitive in its final conclusions (Richard III is innocent; Henry VII is the real demon), whereas historical conclusions are more tentative (X contributed to Y, which is important because of Z). The pivotal distinction between detection and historical methods, though, is detection’s emphasis on the individual. Certainly, historians also examine singularly important people, but history as a field allows for examinations of social movements, class structures, environmental changes, etc. Detection focuses on a limited event (or perhaps a string of crime), but history looks at longer trends and subtle shifts. It acknowledges that humans are not the only movers-and-shakers (consider the power of institutions, cultural developments, and ideas), and therefore its domain of study is broader.

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