"Finding A Home For Difficult Pasts" Reading Blog

This week's readings, while taking on the subject of "difficult pasts" has been, in a word, difficult for me. As public historians we all hope that we are creating work that engages the public; work that speaks well to a variety of the different ethnic, socioeconomic, and intellectual backgrounds that our visitors encompass. This week's readings have left me less than hopeful that this is an accomplishable goal, or even, it might seem at some cultural institutions, the goal at all.

The essays in Slavery in Public History tell too well the story of American discomfort with troubling practices of the past. Sadly, all the smart and important work being done by public historians to try and engage the public in a critical analysis of the role of slavery and race in American history is likely lost on a public that is at times unable and other times unwilling to talk about it. Unless Americans come to terms with the "difficult" parts of history, and begin to speak candidly and openly about the complex relationship of slavery, race, class, and economics in American past, public historians might just be spinning their wheels.

Another reading for this week that gave me similar feelings of despair for the public history craft was The Lowell Experiment. The book, a case study of sorts about the cultural revitalization efforts of Lowell, Mass., was actually one of my favorite books of the semester. (Regardless of the mood it put me in.) I think my concerns can be best summed up by a passage from the book: "even when the officially sanctioned narratives are unusually critical and challenging, then, as they are in Lowell, these "communicative spaces" are highly selective about what they actually communicate. And despite the good intentions of many of the people who shaped these landscapes, they do not provide maps for actual participation in conversation about the relationships of power and modes of production in the word we live in now."(pg 67)

So, this leaves me thinking, what if, with all our good intentions we still aren't talking about the right things. Sure we can talk critically about a number of issues in a public history setting, but will we look back in 20 years and hope we told the same stories? If we are unable to get the public to discuss the "difficult stuff" of American history, then did we fail to provide those maps for participation? It would seem so.

Perhaps this post is particularly pessimistic because its the end of the semester and the large ominous cloud of unfinished school work is about to rain down on my head. I hope that is so, because I'm an eternal optimist, and this week the readings had me feeling pretty blue.