tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14712796729503682432024-03-05T18:14:33.229-08:00Historiography (Mostly) MattersJohn C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-67016580625606378322011-09-14T14:48:00.000-07:002011-09-14T14:48:38.838-07:00David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer: A "Director's Cut"<br />
I have been spending some of my browsing time at the still-newish, still-figuring-it-all-out <a href="http://www.grantland.com/">Grantland</a>. For those unfamiliar, Grantland is the brainchild of <a href="http://www.grantland.com/columnists/billsimmons">Bill Simmons</a> to create a new space for long-form journalism on sports and popular culture, plus a healthy dose of Web 2.0-oriented materials (including a podcast network, blogs, and my personal favourite, a weekly feature called "The YouTube Hall of Fame"). Perhaps my single favourite initiative at Grantland, though, is the "Director's Cut," which is being edited by Michael MacCambridge. Director's Cut offers a re-publishing of a widely-respected piece of sport journalism and then, like on a DVD-commentary, uses footnotes to allow the author to be interviewed (by MacCambridge) alongside the essay. <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6761350/bringing-all-back-home">The first one of these</a>, a 1980 feature by Tony Kornheiser for I<i>nside Sports</i>, was fascinating in no small part because the author has stopped writing (he does television and radio for ESPN) feeling he is out of words, that his literary gun has no more bullets in its chamber. And when I say "fascinating," I also mean "terrifying" as the essay that is printed alongside the footnotes is full of wit, insight, respect for the subject (Nolan Ryan, then of the Houston Astros) and for the reader, and it all seems so effortless. And then "it" went away.<br />
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As good as the first instalment of this feature is, <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6940897/federer-religious-experience">it is the current incarnation</a>, a re-publishing of DFW's essay on Roger Federer (from 2006) that I would urge anyone reading this to go visit and read immediately. (And then perhaps read the Kornheiser instalment, too, if only for the chance to see the 1980 Houston Astros' uniforms one more time. Shudder.) Besides being deeply influenced and inspired by Foster Wallace, I think this particular essay is a master class for all storytellers, especially those of us who struggle with the challenge of conveying our sense of amazement, wonder, and excitement with our subjects to our readers without becoming hackney abusers of exclamation points, the word "amazing,"or, heaven forbid, emoticons. (Good lord, re-reading that previous sentence makes me want to yell at some kids in the neighbourhood for being on my lawn and playing their music too loud.) MacCambridge cannot interview DFW, of course, but he contextualizes the essay's making and publication with some fresh new information and perspective. For DFW-junkies, that alone makes the Grantland feature a must-read.<br />
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Anyway, please go read that essay. It is amazing.<br />
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<br />John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-20098134135902091792011-08-16T09:27:00.000-07:002011-08-16T09:27:41.413-07:00Two Years of RustBecause I have been fielding some questions from students and colleagues about my whereabouts and going-ons for the last couple of years, I thought a long-overdue blog post was warranted. What follows is narcissistic, navel-gazing, and perhaps a candidate for <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/humblebrag">#humblebrag</a>. Forewarned. Better stuff will be coming in the weeks and months ahead as this blog gets a soft re-boot of sorts.<br />
<br />
After teaching since I finished my PhD in 2002, the last two years provided a most welcome break from the grind. Thanks to the generation that preceded me in the university, and provided vastly improved working conditions for academics, I benefitted from not only a sabbatical in 2009-2010 but also a parental leave for 2010-2011. I managed to stay rather active in those 2 years, especially with 2 new edited books (well, one brand new and one "new and improved" from the first edition), some conference and public presentations, plus examining doctoral and M.A. theses, doctoral comprehensive examinations, and chairing an OGS committee (not in history -- for which all historians let out a big "WHEW") for the first time. <br />
<br />
Closer to my academic home, I was also part of a new initiative called "DH@CWorks" (website forthcoming), or "Digital History at Carleton Workshop." At the website, we shall be promoting a wide range of new research by students and faculty, done in the context of our courses, that are contributions to the burgeoning field of digital humanities and digital history. Among the the things that I will be contributing is the development of a both an immersive interactive website and a mobile computing application related to the place memories of 20th-century childhoods in neighbourhoods around Carleton. More details about this can be read about at the <a href="http://ccph.tumblr.com/post/4126187486/oral-histories-life-stories">CCPH Tumblr page</a>.<br />
<br />
This fall, in addition to teaching a third-year course in Historical Representations I am also coming home to Canadian Social History. I could not be more excited to teach the course which has best defined me as a teaching professor, and I will be teaching with the second edition of Home, Work, and Play for the first time. The usual combination of nerves and excitement that accompany us on that first day are going to be on steroids for me. I already feel bad for my students: a hyper, excitable professor at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning is nothing less than terrifying. Apologies, 2304ers.<br />
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I am also very excited about the crop of new graduate students coming to work with me this September, including 3 new public history M.A. students doing different-but-complementary research on the commemorative practices of the War of 1812. Road trips next summer to the north shore of the St. Lawrence and the Niagara Peninsula are already planned. It will be a spectacular nerd-fest for those of us there doing fieldwork. <br />
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If I write one more word about myself, I might vomit on my keyboard. So that's it. I am back, I am rusty, but I am also excited.<br />
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(As an apology for this post, here is something beautiful:<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="180" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/27235856?color=ffffff" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/27235856">LA Light</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/deerdog">Colin Rich</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-73373246379969126872011-01-18T11:19:00.000-08:002011-01-18T11:19:54.724-08:00Michael Chabon on Being Where You're AtAlong with David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, I consider Michael Chabon absolutely essential reading. While each is perhaps best known as a novelist or author of short fiction, it is their respective forays into literary nonfiction which I read and re-read consistently for inspiration. (The novels and short stories are purely for my inner self which does not belong to anyone but me...so there!) Recently, Chabon was a guest blogger at <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/">Ta-Nhehisi Coates' blog</a> over at the Atlantic and while<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/01/backspin-or-how-hip-hop-returned-to-my-life/69292/"> his post on his rediscovery and renewed obsession with hip hop</a> is a great read (who else would use Borges to explain why <i>Wax Poetics</i> is so seminal to postwar American culture?), his 10 January 2011 post made me both think and smile. Here are the bits that spoke so loudly to me, but please read the whole post <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/01/thats-why-i-came/69213/">at the Atlantic site</a>:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">...<br />
The real Telegraph Avenue runs straight as a steel cable, changing its nature more or less completely every ten blocks or so, from the medical-marijuana souks of Oaksterdam, past the former Lamp Post bar where Bobby Seale used to hang out (now called Interplay Center, where you can "unlock the wisdom of your body"), past Section 8 housing and the site of a founding settlement of the native Ohlone people at the corner of 51st Street, past the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library and Akwaba Braiding and a buttload of Ethiopian restaurants, ending in an august jangle at the gates of the Cal campus, and I guess that for a guy who likes hanging around the borderlands--between genres, cultures, musics, legacies, styles--the appeal of Telegraph lies in the way it reflects a local determination to find your path irrespective of boundary lines, picking up what you can, shaking off what you can, along the way. But can you claim a home in a nameless place, at the edge of a wandering border?<br />
<br />
Or is your "hometown" only, ever, the place where you grew up? For me that would be Columbia, MD, from shortly after the late-'60s opening of that "planned community," in a vast stretch of former tobacco country south of Baltimore, through its idealistic heyday of the 1970s. I haven't been back in years, and at any rate could never hope to return to the Columbia where I grew up, still exuberantly dedicated to becoming the hometown envisioned by its founder, James Rouse--multiracial, multiethnic, ecumenical, economically diverse, green and heavily playgrounded and bicycle-friendly, fulfilling the promises of the American experiment one neocolonial tract house at a time. That Columbia, to the extent that it ever existed anywhere but (at least) in the imagination of one little white boy, has long since faded away.<br />
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Maybe your hometown is always an imaginary place: the home of your imagination. If so, then mine--at its best, at its most vivid--whether the vanishing rainbow of Columbia, or the shifting restless polycultural territory manifesting in the joint between Oakland and Berkeley, is a place a lot like this place right here, a place to which people come most of all, I think, because they want to live around people who are not like them, because that is the very thing they have most in common, because they are dedicated to the self-evident truth articulated in one of the founding documents of my hometown, that it ain't where you're from, it's where you're at.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
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</span></span>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-27822843568486702822010-11-08T19:05:00.000-08:002010-11-08T19:05:20.042-08:00Place Memories in SongIn honour of the publication of <a href="http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299173167">Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada</a>, I offer two great bands, two great songs, and two very different place memories. In Rush's Subdivisions, a lament for being stranded and somewhat lost in a non-place, where the dreamer and the misfit are all alone; in Arcade Fire's We Used to Wait, the lament is about the anomie of the wilderness downtown, where youth was spent just waiting for something to happen. Both songs and both place memories resonate very deeply for me. I left my hometown when I turned 19, travelled 600 km, and felt blessed relief. By my mid 20s, though, I spent a lot of nights in the downtown streets of my adopted home looking, waiting, and wondering what I had been so eager to find. What about you?<br />
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Rush, "Subdivisions" (1982)<br />
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<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Lu9Ycq64Gy4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Lu9Ycq64Gy4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />
<br />
Lyrics:<br />
<br />
Sprawling on the fringes of the city<br />
In geometric order<br />
An insulated border<br />
In between the bright lights<br />
And the far unlit unknown<br />
<br />
Growing up it all seems so one-sided<br />
Opinions all provided<br />
The future pre-decided<br />
Detached and subdivided<br />
In the mass production zone<br />
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone<br />
<br />
Chorus<br />
(Subdivisions)<br />
In the high school halls<br />
In the shopping malls<br />
Conform or be cast out<br />
(Subdivisions)<br />
In the basement bars<br />
In the backs of cars<br />
Be cool or be cast out<br />
Any escape might help disprove the unattractive truth<br />
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth<br />
<br />
Drawn like moths we drift into the city<br />
The timeless old attraction<br />
Cruising for the action<br />
Lit up like a firefly<br />
Just to feel the living night<br />
<br />
Well some will sell their dreams for small desires<br />
Or lose the race to rats<br />
Get caught in ticking traps<br />
And start to dream of somewhere<br />
To relax their restless flight<br />
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights...<br />
<br />
Chorus<br />
<br />
<br />
Arcade Fire, "We Used to Wait" (2010)<br />
(note: this video can be customized at:<a href="http://thewildernessdowntown.com/"> http://thewildernessdowntown.com</a>/)<br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SYdJAi-BBrs?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SYdJAi-BBrs?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br />
<br />
Lyrics<br />
<br />
used to write,<br />
I used to write letters I used to sign my name<br />
I used to sleep at night<br />
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain<br />
<br />
But by the time we met<br />
By the time we met the times had already changed<br />
<br />
So I never wrote a letter<br />
I never took my true heart I never wrote it down<br />
So when the lights cut out<br />
I was lost standing in the wilderness downtown<br />
<br />
Now our lives are changing fast (x2)<br />
Hope that something pure can last (x2)<br />
<br />
It seems strange <br />
How we used to wait for letters to arrive<br />
But what's stranger still<br />
Is how something so small can keep you alive<br />
<br />
We used to wait<br />
We used to waste hours just walking around<br />
We used to wait<br />
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown<br />
<br />
oooo we used to wait (x3)<br />
Sometimes it never came<br />
(oooo we used to wait)<br />
Sometimes it never came<br />
(oooo we used to wait)<br />
Still moving through the pain<br />
<br />
I'm gonna write a letter to my true love<br />
I'm gonna sign my name<br />
Like a patient on a table<br />
I wanna walk again gonna move through the pain<br />
<br />
Now our lives are changing fast (x2)<br />
Hope that something pure can last (x2)<br />
<br />
oooo we used to wait (x3)<br />
Sometimes it never came<br />
(oooo we used to wait)<br />
Sometimes it never came<br />
(oooo we used to wait)<br />
Still moving through the pain<br />
(oooooo) <br />
<br />
we used to wait (x3)<br />
<br />
We used to wait for it (x2)<br />
Now we're screaming sing the chorus again<br />
We used to wait for it<br />
We used to wait for it<br />
Now we're screaming sing the chorus again<br />
<br />
I used to wait for it (x2)<br />
Hear my voice screaming sing the chorus again<br />
<br />
Wait for it (x3)John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-40993113587918962772010-08-09T06:29:00.000-07:002010-08-09T06:35:32.831-07:00Not Far From the Truth...with respect to how some desperate first- and second-year undergraduate history students, confronted with an exam question they do not know, will plunge in and write, with great conviction, an outrageously wrong (but always entertaining) answer.<br />
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(See the full-size original here: <a href="http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/2010-08-08/">http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/2010-08-08/</a>)<br />
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</div><div><a href="http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/2010-08-08/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Get Fuzzy"><img alt="Get Fuzzy" border="40" height="180" src="http://c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/dyn/str_strip/330828.full.gif" width="400" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"></span></span><br />
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</div>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-23301475444731395712010-07-27T16:57:00.000-07:002010-07-27T16:57:11.101-07:00Some Summer SillinessWith the return of Mad Men for another season (a show I have yet to watch -- I know, I know), the Interwebs are abuzz with some wonderful faux Mad Men advertisements. This is my personal favourite:<br />
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"Mad Men Season 11"<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSsXIzV2sxTFCWOFPpGwq6u7jTqaAmgd2FJNBurMlXsNFOKmaFX0_rTQPkKaAHLVTX1IydpFdRSSdSvXQWbTJqoQA_S2TH4G61jKFWVX9YYmkh12ZeDls_cVdUBgg5JVM9-fbWmH2cHRE/s1600/mad+men+season+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSsXIzV2sxTFCWOFPpGwq6u7jTqaAmgd2FJNBurMlXsNFOKmaFX0_rTQPkKaAHLVTX1IydpFdRSSdSvXQWbTJqoQA_S2TH4G61jKFWVX9YYmkh12ZeDls_cVdUBgg5JVM9-fbWmH2cHRE/s320/mad+men+season+11.jpg" /></a></div><br />
This is courtesy of the sublime <a href="http://lonelysandwich.com/post/851886252/mad-men-season-11">Adam Lisagor, aka lonelysandwich</a>.<br />
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Given the advertisements in the "Home" section of <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Home-Work-Play-Situating-Canadian/dp/0195431243">Home, Work, and Play</a>, though, this one also caught my eye:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3ENeIBA5zwmza9PQEUqgvLLv5g91LE5OniMTN3U8zrZ5WbKy3xSMTTsP5S7jfHtSmsFc_cyNBEeltKfiVRkOPc1nltxIsPE_2x8h7bhAX1RY1iRppfWjxyhDvgnuLqIF3n9MJRGnBh4/s1600/ready_for_husband.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3ENeIBA5zwmza9PQEUqgvLLv5g91LE5OniMTN3U8zrZ5WbKy3xSMTTsP5S7jfHtSmsFc_cyNBEeltKfiVRkOPc1nltxIsPE_2x8h7bhAX1RY1iRppfWjxyhDvgnuLqIF3n9MJRGnBh4/s320/ready_for_husband.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://jezebel.com/5596673/the-best-mad-men-infomercial-pitches/gallery/2">The original appears on Jezebel</a> and is one of many that appear as a result of their call for submissions for a Mad Men-inspired contest.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-61165850890322350652010-06-07T09:55:00.000-07:002010-06-17T08:26:13.415-07:00Reporting, Selling, and Linking: An UpdateWhat did I do on my sabbatical? Pretty soon I will answer this question for my employer, but in the interim here are some of the highlights:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuA7lqufiMUJxlP5Et6EHRbPMmMh7FUqsJ6pS2pWDMituxhLOBm8X_HZWX6vqn0IgfVxN2p98_mXRgBtfKwZN8p068tNc8b8byaRUrkCSaXeQ0mDEhfJKL0LtZqVwcNfqxbea3XeOfles/s1600/HWP_2nd+ed_Dustjacket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuA7lqufiMUJxlP5Et6EHRbPMmMh7FUqsJ6pS2pWDMituxhLOBm8X_HZWX6vqn0IgfVxN2p98_mXRgBtfKwZN8p068tNc8b8byaRUrkCSaXeQ0mDEhfJKL0LtZqVwcNfqxbea3XeOfles/s320/HWP_2nd+ed_Dustjacket.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The <a href="http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195431247.html">second edition of <i>HWP</i></a> arrived on shelves in early May and it represents a rather thorough makeover from the first edition. The changes were not from dissatisfaction with the first edition; instead, they come from our commitment to offer a reader that seeks to reflect the current state of the field. The most serious changes emerged, not surprisingly, for the "Play" section as the literature on recreation, leisure, and sport has been explosive in the four years since the first edition of our book. We also re-worked our lengthy introduction to the book, explaining some of the new themes (such as transnationalism) and new points of emphasis (such as sexuality) that define this edition of the book. The book remains focused on "social space" both in the readings chosen and in the visual primary documents included at the end of each section, as social historians have become even more spatially-oriented (and aware) in the last half decade. There are lots of reasons for this, and in the introduction to the book we make mention of several. But one reason, and I offer here it as a personal observation, is the influence of environmental history on social history: for the last twenty years, the influence has tended to be chiefly the other way around, as environmental historians drew inspiration and guidance from social historians. We have arrived, it seems, at a point when it is more apt to describe the relationship as more dialectical, defined by cross-fertilization and exchange. Readers of <i>HWP</i> will hopefully see evidence of this in several of the new readings.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_Hg-No-hxkr9CY8AldYfPh3eMdhYAtBi76ZPaaSLIqwHQ8-_nK442eS6n9UsOaKw0vhYjlJkXy9RF7Tygi49XOA-Cbx_EbBajsHkCoDV6uJPE7_kvbO48Xuywh61aWPpAgpBc1kdzhQ/s1600/Opp+%26+Walsh_FINAL+COVER_REV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_Hg-No-hxkr9CY8AldYfPh3eMdhYAtBi76ZPaaSLIqwHQ8-_nK442eS6n9UsOaKw0vhYjlJkXy9RF7Tygi49XOA-Cbx_EbBajsHkCoDV6uJPE7_kvbO48Xuywh61aWPpAgpBc1kdzhQ/s320/Opp+%26+Walsh_FINAL+COVER_REV.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.ubcpress.ca/books/catalogues.html">Coming this November from UBC Press</a>, <i>Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada</i> is the second collaboration I have enjoyed with Jim Opp. This project began in the Spring in 2007 when a so-so plenary presentation I gave to the <a href="http://www.carleton.ca/underhill/">Underhill Colloquium</a> became the basis for a conversation between us about what I was really doing in that paper and what Jim was thinking about with respect to his own work on photography, memory, and history in the Prairies. Our conversation quickly expanded into what we admired and were inspired by in the literature and what we felt was missing (or perhaps not being emphasized enough) in terms of our scholarly thinking. Those conversations became the blueprint for the above book, a collection of new, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scholarly writing by us and by ten collaborators from across the country. Our fellow authors are, in order of appearance: Cecilia Morgan, Frances Swyripa, Alan Gordon, Russell Johnson, Mike Ripmeester, Patricia Gentile, Steven High, Kirsten McAllister, Matthew Evenden, and Joan Schwartz. <br />
How we wrote this book will, one hopes, become more common for all scholars in the social sciences and humanities just as it is already well-establish in Quebec's scholarly culture. After consolidating contributors, Jim and I applied for and received a <a href="http://www.sshrc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/conferences-colloques-eng.aspx">SSHRC Aid to Workshop Grant</a> that, in combination with wonderful support from Carleton, allowed us to pre-circulate first drafts of all the chapters and then meet for two days of intense-but-exhilarating conversations about them. There were no formal, lengthy presentations as is common at larger conferences. Instead, it was a group of 16 (our contributors, minus Joan Schwartz, plus four doctoral students and our editor at UBC Press, Melissa Pitts) engaged people sitting around a common table having discussions about what it was we were doing and how we were doing it. We worked through each chapter in order and then, at the end, had an open session about the book as a whole. In between we took our meals together and talked about endless other things, sometimes related, sometimes not (thankfully!), to the placing of memory and the remembering of place. We left the workshop in the summer of 2008, retreated to our homes, and produced the next drafts. Full of inspiration from our experience at the workshop, Jim and I went to work on an introduction that is, we feel, unusually ambitious for an edited collection. Following the peer review process, we decided to approach one of the foremost scholars of these scholarly themes, <a href="http://www.queensu.ca/art/bio.php?id=28">Joan Schwartz</a>, and asked if she would be interested in writing an Afterword for the collection. Not only did she agree to this, but Joan wrote a remarkable essay that is no mere conclusion, a re-stating what has already been said. Instead, it is an essay that uses the insights of the book as a point of departure for a intensely personal and scholarly reflection on place memories and places of memory in our everyday lives. In every way, and exceeding our wildest hopes, it became the 11th chapter of the book.<br />
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Along with Jess Dunkin, I am co-organizing this Fall's Shannon Lecture Series in Canadian Social History. The central theme of the series is certainly related to <i>Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada</i>, especially my own chapter in the book. It is also central to <a href="http://chat.carleton.ca/%7Ejdunkin/Welcome.html">Jess's own doctoral work</a> and scholarly thinking. More details can be gleaned at <a href="http://www2.carleton.ca/shannonlectureseries/">our website</a>, and more are forthcoming, but a few words can be added here. In addition to being very excited about our lineup of scholars, we are equally excited about the participation of a film-maker John Greyson and singer-songwriter Miss Emily Brown. Both have thought a great deal about the past and their relationships to it (intellectually, artistically, personally, and politically) and visible traces of this reflection can be seen and heard in their art. We think their participation in the Shannon's adds not only new scholarly insights into storytelling and the social effect of stories, but it will also inspire our audience in ways they may not expect.<br />
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This is Henry John Reyburn Walsh, who on 19 May 2010 transformed this sabbatical experience from 'satisfying' to 'unforgettable'. As shown above, he has more than a hint of a sense of humour and timing. And most wonderful for me is that when I hold him I see his incredible mother looking back at me through his eyes just as I do when I hug his sisters, Hope and Emily.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Y3jJZA9nG69S4nOUoHLX3APN5k-wNfUkyVQZWAkY6M3R6_Rh94YU-5AxMUBWWroRr7brj6CQa3F_1aBCos0gFZ8MKGt4tIkB11dlyQbMQcUrZ-tPd8hocVVcKRYhVoSCwOfOixDk3TA/s1600/ragamuffins+at+Mary+Lake_June+2010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Y3jJZA9nG69S4nOUoHLX3APN5k-wNfUkyVQZWAkY6M3R6_Rh94YU-5AxMUBWWroRr7brj6CQa3F_1aBCos0gFZ8MKGt4tIkB11dlyQbMQcUrZ-tPd8hocVVcKRYhVoSCwOfOixDk3TA/s320/ragamuffins+at+Mary+Lake_June+2010.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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While we had no idea our year away from Ottawa was going to be anything other than an adventure for the four of us, we could not be happier that those plans got radically changed and we are returning to the nation's capital as a quintet. It is the third time I have become a parent, and it is no less wonderful, exciting, and terrifying as it was / is the first two times. My one regret is Henry came along too late to make it into the Acknowledgments for either <i>HWP</i> or <i>Placing Memory</i>. <i>Landscapes of Longing</i> is going to be for him. As it should, since it's his fault I am still not quite done. (Not really, Henry! Daddy also likes to make "jokes.")John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-65123557775976201152010-05-11T08:51:00.000-07:002010-05-11T08:51:25.959-07:00Richard Overy on FireFrom across the Atlantic, Richard Overy says a number of very smart things about History. (Margaret MacMillan might disagree.) Rather than paraphrase, here it is in its entirety, as well as <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=411360&c=2">a link to its original home</a>.<br />
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*****<br />
<br />
The historical present<br />
<br />
29 April 2010<br />
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It is the year 2050. A bright young sixth-former is discussing her choice of university course with her grandmother. She is considering a degree in heritage studies.<br />
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"Is it really true that you did a course called history at uni?" she asks.<br />
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"Yes," her grandmother replies. "It looked at bits of the past."<br />
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"But what for?" asks her grandchild. "What was the point? Heritage studies is really useful. I want a job at a Heritage Trail agency when I've finished uni. History must have been so dead."<br />
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Fantasy or the future? History today is at a crossroads; the debate about its "function", its purpose, has sharpened. As an academic discipline it is under assault from two different, although related, directions.<br />
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On the one hand there is the "democratisation" of history - history as heritage, a commodity whose primary function is to entertain and inform. On the other there is governmental pressure to make history socially useful, contributing in visible ways to the gross national product while providing the taxpayer with some public display of its utility.<br />
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Those who are exerting these twin pressures are united in the view that history has to come down from the ivory tower and enter the marketplace if it is to survive. Where medical research, engineering, social studies, even languages have little difficulty in showing their value-added nature to the taxpaying public and government customers, history has no easy utilitarian rationale. It survives precariously only because tens of thousands of students want to study it. In a university world led by client choice, this is a difficult subject to consign to the academic scrapheap.<br />
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The democratisation of the past is not, of course, an entirely negative process. History is as capable of being appropriated as a commodity and a source of entertainment as any other discipline. The current "history industry" is in itself partly responsible for the huge appetite for the subject at university level. It is sometimes difficult for historians to recognise that history is everyone's property in a way that advanced research in the natural or social sciences is not.<br />
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There is much that historians can bring to bear on media representations of the past; no one advocates drawing an iron curtain between popular history and historical scholarship. Indeed, historians in Britain have for more than a century supplied an important bridge between academic history and the public - T.B. Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, Arnold Toynbee, G.M. Trevelyan and A.J.P. Taylor are only the most glittering among them.<br />
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The difficulty arises when the public is asked to discriminate between popular (and populist) history and its academic relation. Popular history is held in high esteem currently because it is accessible, lively and, occasionally, genuinely interactive. Public confusion over what history is as an academic subject derives from the misperception that popular history and popular history writers are doing in some sense real history, while the arcane, theoretically driven and undramatic scholarship in university departments is bad history.<br />
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Popular history clusters around a standard set of themes - the Tudors, the Holocaust, the First and Second World Wars - or colourful personalities (Churchill above all, Hitler and Stalin not far behind), and little beyond that. Much popular history writing re-enacts the past. The search for engaging personalities, titillating narratives or dramas of operatic intensity engages with the tawdry obsession with celebrity.<br />
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The public's capacity to distinguish clearly between fact and fiction in this process is not very sophisticated, but in a sense it doesn't matter if the story is told in a novel or a non-fiction narrative. There is no higher intellectual purpose to be served by popular narration other than to describe and entertain. It is popular history, not academic history, that is really disengaged from the real world.<br />
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The second pressure comes from public policy. The current concern with the "impact" made by academic, university-based disciplines means that history (alongside a cluster of other small arts subjects) has to demonstrate in a more formal way the value it adds to the social product.<br />
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It is clear that this does not mean intellectual or scholarly impact, for which the government and perhaps a large majority of the electorate are not directly concerned. What public policy requires is the ability to explain to a taxpaying electorate why it is worthwhile paying large sums of money to allow people to study the past. Impact may be one way of showing that.<br />
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Heritage has an impact, from heritage trails to local museum exhibitions or the preservation of historic monuments. History may also be used to supply government departments with advice on areas where any relevance can be demonstrated, although in many cases it is unlikely to be advice they would either use or understand.<br />
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The most that history may do is to offer what are called "transferable skills". The implication of this idea is that history for history's sake has very little to offer. Its worth is to be measured by indices of employability: degree levels achieved; the use of IT and PowerPoint presentations to class; and the production of neatly footnoted essays.<br />
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These generic outcomes replace substance with form. It is not history that matters, but the capacity to produce a generation of wealth-creators.<br />
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Running through the concern with demonstrating an effective public function is a utilitarian view of scholarship: is it socially useful, does it contribute to raising national wealth, does it create jobs? Ministers, like the young girl who wants to do heritage studies, may well ask of history: "But what for?"<br />
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Academic history must resist trying to appease either or both of these constituencies. If these pressures are not resisted, then a thing called history will slowly mutate over the next generation into cultural and heritage studies, informing popular concerns with the past but not sustaining the intellectual and scholarly capacity to develop, elaborate and articulate complex ways of understanding and interpreting it.<br />
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Historians have always generated impact of diverse and rewarding kinds, and will continue to do so without the banal imperative to demonstrate added value. There is no real division between what historians can contribute and what the public may expect, but the second of these should by no means drive the first.<br />
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Nor should short-term public policy dictate what is researched, how history is taught or the priorities of its practitioners. If fashion, fad or political priority had dictated what history produced over the past century, British intellectual and cultural life would have been deeply impoverished. Not least, the many ways in which historical approaches have invigorated and informed other disciplines would have been lost.<br />
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This is a particular issue for public policy, with the idea that history must find ways of engaging more with those who produce policy to justify itself. History is not a congenial tool for doing this. It is in essence a critical discipline, characteristically ambiguous on many key issues, subversive of popular myth and prejudice, and unlikely to supply any advice that is not hostage to paradox and uncertainty. It is hard to imagine the government asking a panel of historians to explain the pros and cons of military engagement in Afghanistan, useful though that might have been. It is the historian's job to ask awkward questions, not to validate current assumptions.<br />
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History needs an environment of free enquiry more than almost any other discipline. Like the natural sciences, it is also engaged in pushing back the frontiers of the knowable. It needs to sustain an independent approach to what is researched and written, and, like all academic activity, requires the freedom to make mistakes, engage in long-term research and pioneer developments that the wider public cannot engage with comfortably.<br />
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Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, in her 2008 book, <i>The Uses And Abuses Of History</i>, called on her peers to reduce their commitment to theory and to write shorter sentences. To do so would be to dumb down what history as a human science is doing.<br />
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The writing of history is intentionally complex and linguistically sophisticated. At the cutting edge of modern research, it has no less reason to be inaccessible than physics or biochemistry. The reference points for the historian must remain the intellectual framework within which research is generated and the body of academic opinion at which it is directed. The result will not be an invisible discipline but one that is constantly refreshing intellectual life in imaginative, intuitive but rigorous ways.<br />
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For academic history, these are not problems that are to be simply wished away or accepted without contest. It is important to be able to think of more positive ways in which history can make its case for survival and meet some of the demand for engagement with the wider world of policy and popular history.<br />
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One major difference between the British experience and that of other European states has been the absence in the UK of specialised, sometimes privately funded, institutes where historical scholarship is patronised and protected. It is not easy to imagine local councils funding historical institutes alongside local museums and heritage sites, but it would be one way of ensuring that academic history meets local public constituencies.<br />
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It may be possible to find external funding from businesses or institutions for historical centres or institutes, with research fellowships and bursaries that could generate high-quality research and provide close links with the locality. Better still, universities may accept that historical "innovation centres" are a possibility and supply the funding and support to ensure that experimental research can be undertaken without the close supervision of the current review apparatus.<br />
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By making the work of academic historians more visible in a wider cultural and intellectual milieu, some of the alleged dichotomy between the ivory tower and the marketplace may be overcome.<br />
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Historians have to accept collectively that the pressure of public fashion and political utility may well undermine the foundation of the discipline unless they are willing to stand up and defend the nature of what they do. Finding their own ways to construct a more effective interface between their discipline and the public would help.<br />
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This is not a plea for historians to turn their backs on the wider world: there is nothing to be gained by doing so. Historians should be public figures, too, capable of communicating what they do to a variety of constituencies. Historians, as French medievalist Marc Bloch once remarked, live in the present. Accepting that reality does not mean that they have to accept that present, any more than Bloch accepted the German occupation of his country in the Second World War.<br />
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Popular history has a life of its own and generates its own impact; professional historians may play a part in that if they choose, but popular history is not the same as academic history. The former does not generally set out to ask and answer large questions or explore aspects of methodological innovation, but to paint a vivid picture of the past. The demarcation between the two is not sharp, but it needs to be clear.<br />
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Public policy may find a role for history, but that, too, is not what it as a discipline is for. Nor in the end does historical writing sit easily with public priorities. History reflects very critically on public policy and political behaviour; it is as likely to endorse subversion as authority; it is concerned with past abuses and discrimination, and by understanding how they operated it opens up current discrimination to critical review; it is concerned with understanding the past by challenging the patterns of myth-making that distinguish popular perception from the view historians may take.<br />
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The net result of these many approaches is to make history the most humane of subjects. Its value in broader cultural and intellectual terms is indisputable, although not as tangible as the impact agenda would like. Historical writing at its best is critical, exciting, thought-provoking, frustratingly ambiguous and uncertain. It is the reflective element of the collective mind. If history becomes just heritage studies, the collective intelligence will be all the poorer.<br />
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Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter. He has written more than 20 books on the Second World War and the European dictatorships, including most recently The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (2009) and 1939: Countdown to War (2009). He was a winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 2004.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-9678650900499356152010-02-09T09:02:00.000-08:002010-03-08T13:06:30.415-08:00History and the Textbook 2.0?"Journalism schools across the country are now focused on "convergence" -- the need to impart skills to students in multiple media techniques (video, photography, writing, sound, new media) -- in order to meet the needs of a multiplatform industry. But they miss the essential point: stories will not be told in the same way. The power relationships among author, subject, and reader will evolve, as will the filters, and the linear narrative based on the authority of a single voice, is up for grabs in an increasingly nonlinear, decentralized media environment."<br />
-- Fred Ritchin, <span style="font-style: italic;">After Photography</span> (W.W. Norton, 2009), p.109<br />
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While there used to be much excitement about "CD-ROMs" and then "websites" for scholarly publishing, the iPad (and within a couple of years, its imitators), offers academic authors a fundamentally new way to think about our role as "authors" and how we educate the next generation of historians. Since the iPad is still a couple of months from market, this is pure conjecture at this point based on the tantalizing scraps that the unveiling provided and the explosion of commentary among tech geeks and wizards about what they think they know about it. (For two good examples, see the epic coverage provided by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNNtUTJeINk">Macbreak Weekly</a> or the more concise remarks by <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2010/01/full-interview-john-gruber-on-apples-ipad-announcemen">John Gruber on CBC's Spark</a>, for example.)<br />
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Despite being somewhat heretical for a historian, I want to at least start thinking about what this future might look like. As Ritchin points out, within the university, but not only there, our audiences possess a different cultural and media literacy; while many will choose to wring their hands about a generational pandemic of short-attention spans, there is something else to (re)consider -- the possibilities of multilinear narratives that are both intensive in theme and analytical focus but also extensive as a reading experience. In this admittedly vague future (I am thinking out loud here), this is something that is a hybrid of the traditional book and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE">the movement and flow of web-based hypertext</a>. This is not a future where historians are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA">Jonathan Coulton's code monkeys</a>, but one in which we do what we are trained to do best: produce meaningful cultural engagements with the past.<br />
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As the second edition of <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Home-Work-Play-Situating-1840-1980/dp/0195431243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265298650&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Home, Work, and Play: Situating Canadian Social History</span></a> moves closer to print (shameless plug), and as other opportunities present themselves to me, I am thinking a great deal about a future that seems to be more imminent than it was even a month ago. And it is exciting. For while the author may be dead, her authority as the guardian and gatekeeper of historical knowledge remains unchallenged within scholarly publishing. And nowhere is this more true than in the "textbook", that dreaded (and always big and expensive) book upon which students and professors rely so heavily. Yet textbooks represent the best opportunity for scholarly publishing to begin a new phase of experimentation where the context of classroom (ideally with some component of small group learning) can create a social space to extend the kind of dialogic, intensive-and-expansive reading experience that a new kind of textbook might provide.<br />
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Allowing our students, and all of our reading audiences, to take a more active role in their learning is not merely the right thing to do if we are to remain relevant. It is also the best way to make our audiences engaged and present, something that enriches both our own time and place and those of the past.<br />
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UPDATE: While I appreciate the irony of posting a video that appears in Flash (like the iPhone, the iPad does not support Flash) and deals with an example of a partnership with Adobe, Wired Magazine is getting ahead of the curve. The important part of the video is the kind of reading experience they are going to be providing. This, it seems to me, is where textbook publishing ought to be headed.<br />
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UPDATE #2: Penguin Books, UK, is one of the publishers trying to get ahead of the iPad curve, and this video (apologies for the quality) gives their overview.<br />
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<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jdExukJVUGI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jdExukJVUGI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-69512096642071423652010-02-02T10:50:00.000-08:002010-02-04T09:36:19.868-08:00Persistence of PlaceFaro is a small town in the southwestern nook of Yukon. I have never been there, and until recently I did not know it existed. I suspect in both cases, I am firmly within the majority. Faro's story, however, is only too well known. I implore you to clear 10 minutes of your time to hear it:<br /><br /><embed src="http://media1.nfb.ca/medias/flash/ONFflvplayer-gama.swf" width="516" height="337" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="mID=IDOBJ6311&bufferTime=10&width=516&height=337&image=http://media1.nfb.ca/medias/nfb_tube/thumbs_large/2009/Our-town-faro_BIG.jpg&showWarningMessages=false&streamNotFoundDelay=15&lang=en&getPlaylistOnEnd=true&playlist_id=REL179&embeddedMode=true"></embed><br /><br />As we learn in the film, history has not been kind to Faro. The mine and those who worked for it are like ghosts whose absence and loss are made only too apparent by the empty homes that Murray Hampton shows prospective buyers. Despite Mr. Hampton's poignant comments about the pain and suffering the mine closure engendered, the film does not linger very long on it nor on the fate of the mine's workers and families. What happened to those people? Where did they go? How did they cope? What culpability and responsibility does the Cyprus Anvil Mining Corporation hold beyond the generic explanation of "globalization"?<br /><br />Instead, the film is more interested in the new story that Faro boosters are telling about themselves and which we see vividly at the 2004 Yukon Home Show. This new story is about the "persistence of place" and it is a narrative focused exclusively on those who stayed and those that have arrived since the closure. It is a rather hopeful narrative, which, in the context of the present, is certainly comforting. And the film captures the hopes and dreams of people like Murray Hampton by showing us happy children, houses being filled, folks giving storefronts a makeover, and even a municipal golf course (of a sort).<br /><br />Storytelling is no mere epiphenomenon for Faro's boosters, a cultural byproduct of other forms of structural change. As we see in the film, and indeed through the film itself, storytelling and narrative are at the forefront of efforts to make such changes possible. When the mines closed and so many went away, Faro's landscape of abandonment must have been a cruel mocking of the words that used to be blazoned on the town's signage:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4rDlUklVLIFtXXPnkjXd7tLmPhT-teQzzwaB7Mo394yT6bXdHGq9j7BGTjnQWLzBrsmAgWTEkg9HF9rIGFnCPxGl3Qw5a-8qCj5yk-lf3giCRsuOTHfZBUxMM17JvxKKUhdaoXbxF-E/s1600-h/Welcome+to+Cyrus+Anvil+Sign.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 196px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4rDlUklVLIFtXXPnkjXd7tLmPhT-teQzzwaB7Mo394yT6bXdHGq9j7BGTjnQWLzBrsmAgWTEkg9HF9rIGFnCPxGl3Qw5a-8qCj5yk-lf3giCRsuOTHfZBUxMM17JvxKKUhdaoXbxF-E/s400/Welcome+to+Cyrus+Anvil+Sign.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434432050537728242" /></a><br /><br />In their efforts to save Faro's place on the map, boosters have undertaken great efforts to change how the landscape of abandonment is to be seen and known. In this new form, the empty houses and the surrounding wilderness are constitutive of a landscape of opportunity ("only $60,000") and a landscape of renewal (young children and a fresh coat of paint). Faro is, Murray Hampton tells us, "a modern suburb type of installation but right in the wilderness". It is certainly not what it was, as another booster explains: "We're not a mining community anymore. We are just a really nice place to live." Both of these remarks are underlined at the <a href="http://www.faroyukon.ca">town's website</a>, in the photograph and map of Faro provided there:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggPJfcE3QLX4MG0cbYajl-gY0NhC0n205MfGZKBjyzb-6FtypUUMu7rV3nTHAEA_eR5NUK712rtnBN9Y1rJ7IMiG0mtUladrGsf9YOkh_ZyrjnIV9t0QFlyISirZjri7gtREBqeD20NOk/s1600-h/Faro+Bird%27s+Eye+View.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggPJfcE3QLX4MG0cbYajl-gY0NhC0n205MfGZKBjyzb-6FtypUUMu7rV3nTHAEA_eR5NUK712rtnBN9Y1rJ7IMiG0mtUladrGsf9YOkh_ZyrjnIV9t0QFlyISirZjri7gtREBqeD20NOk/s400/Faro+Bird%27s+Eye+View.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434114036415047458" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGjEHwT09BZc1QdUTGZeAzoHttmSaw0wja2mQC9vFdUj7ys7qDVmvTaUahCgKtkcgL0N_DU37EgKUhfxYkosZYZ4R3Dr4oyZuDYa0kZzmLgM_-_wsVyeiQYnFkiha6tsPoi-yIykqEnQ/s1600-h/Faro+Town+Map.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 309px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGjEHwT09BZc1QdUTGZeAzoHttmSaw0wja2mQC9vFdUj7ys7qDVmvTaUahCgKtkcgL0N_DU37EgKUhfxYkosZYZ4R3Dr4oyZuDYa0kZzmLgM_-_wsVyeiQYnFkiha6tsPoi-yIykqEnQ/s400/Faro+Town+Map.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434114428257292450" /></a><br /><br />Words, photographs, films, websites, and maps are all being put into the service of a new narrative, one that, for the moment, seems to be allowing Faro to maintain itself as a place. Yet I wonder what role(s) public history might play in all this. For while the persistence of place would seem to frame the past as little more than a "problem" to be solved or "challenge" to overcome, it is, like Murray Hampton, too stubborn to go away. As we see in the film, history is inscribed in the landscape and local civic culture, and it has taken residence in both private and public memory. What is not clear, though, is if history might also be part of Faro's salvation and not merely a record of its destruction. A lot, I would suggest, will depend on what kinds of stories and narratives the people of Faro choose to tell about themselves and which others, from away, tell about Faro.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-32406362456763140662010-01-28T07:02:00.000-08:002010-01-28T07:06:07.393-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcg7ibzsH3Aqj5418VPmfMMRsaHvRcU_CipcDi0b8fEadte0ORO7xkFpVoV6oS86G8NiBJ1N8ylxEXmlP2bMAorebLm6UA3nLqmq1PSV_9RmY51zFdiWmlmXcw-RE6ZyDrI-x1MrksTDI/s1600-h/HowardZinn(c)RobinHolland.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcg7ibzsH3Aqj5418VPmfMMRsaHvRcU_CipcDi0b8fEadte0ORO7xkFpVoV6oS86G8NiBJ1N8ylxEXmlP2bMAorebLm6UA3nLqmq1PSV_9RmY51zFdiWmlmXcw-RE6ZyDrI-x1MrksTDI/s400/HowardZinn(c)RobinHolland.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431806411109214018" /></a><br /><br />Howard Zinn, 1922-2010<br />Photograph by Robin Holland<br />Source: <a href="http://howardzinn.org/default/">http://howardzinn.org/</a>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-62368517200748160392009-11-09T13:43:00.000-08:002009-12-29T07:39:16.150-08:00Pop Art and the EverydayAs the snow comes, a little reminder of warmer times to come:<br /><br /><object width="400" height="225"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1785993&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1785993&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/1785993">Beached</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/keithloutit">Keith Loutit</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-35174316985830789402009-09-23T13:28:00.000-07:002009-09-23T13:42:39.701-07:00Thank You, Professor OrwinWhile the ignorance and sloppiness of Margaret Wente's original column in the Globe and Mail is undeserving of anyone's attention, here is a mature, civil, and most-welcome response from <a href="http://www.ethics.utoronto.ca/index.php?p_id=117&id=4">Clifford Orwin</a>. <br /><br />************************<br /><br />In autumn, a professor's fancies lightly turn to thoughts of teaching. As I told the students in my (monstrously large) introductory course at the University of Toronto last week, I've never attended the Toronto International Film Festival, never felt the least excitement about it. That's because it falls during the first week of classes, when the real action is on campus. I noted that a glimpse of Natalie Portman wouldn't change their lives, while their courses well might. I didn't tell them what is also true - that well into my fourth decade of teaching, I still never sleep the night before my first class.<br /><br />This piece is not about me, and I mention these things only in response to a <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/want-to-know-why-professors-dont-teach/article1293548">recent column </a>by The Globe's Margaret Wente. To hear her tell it, professors don't do much, and what they do accomplish is short on what matters (teaching) and long on what doesn't (research).<br /><br />I'll ignore the suggestion that professors are lazy. That's, like, so 1973 (the year I started teaching). There were in Canada then many pseudo-Oxford dons whose claim to fame was that unlike those awful American professors, they didn't do very much of anything. That's all changed. Today, the indolent are an endangered species. My colleagues in political science and I can announce that we are all Americans - by which I mean workaholics. A great deal of that work is teaching. Universities take teaching not less but more seriously than they did a generation ago.<br /><br />True, I spend just six hours a week in the classroom. Ms. Wente grants that there must be preparation time and grading - "But it's still not much." Much must be a relative term. I spend 40 hours a week on preparation (times 24 weeks) and something like 120 hours a year grading (80 essays times 90 minutes), plus supervising the grading of my teaching assistants.<br /><br />And true, we're not free to spend all our time on teaching. We're also expected to administer, be active in our respective professions, be public intellectuals, show the flag for our programs by delivering lectures elsewhere, practise community outreach, recruit graduate students, raise money for those students and eventually find jobs for them, write research grant applications, pen countless letters of recommendation, referee an endless procession of manuscripts, answer thousands of e-mails, assess colleagues for tenure and promotion, and so on.<br /><br />So I work 70-hour weeks. Some colleagues work less, but some work even more. You can forget the mythical sherry-slipping slacker. We do enjoy long summers, if you want to hold that against us.<br /><br />Just a blurry haze of mint juleps, summer, as I try to get a year's worth of research and writing in. And my teaching depends on that research. To teach is to communicate enthusiasm for learning, and what sustains that enthusiasm is continuing to learn yourself. It's also to set an example of progress to nourish in your students the hope that they too can contribute to progress. No, not all research done at universities is valuable. The surprise is how much of it is. And yes, there is always room for another study of Plato or Tolstoy, for great works are both inexhaustible and must be presented anew to every generation. You can't rest on the laurels of the past, for anything worth learning requires to be constantly relearned.<br /><br />As for devoting more time to teaching, that's not up to us. Society demands that we be research machines, our heads always smoking with relevant discoveries, and not only in the sciences. It's also society that prescribes, through underfunding, that our teaching be wholesale, not retail. I didn't ask to teach a class of 500 this year, and my department (which cares very much about teaching, thank you) didn't ask to offer one. It had no choice, and I drew the short straw.<br /><br />If you want your kids to be in classes of 20, you'll have pay for it, like the parents who shell out $45,000 a year for their offspring at Swarthmore College [http://swarthmore.edu], near Philadelphia.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong. I'm not seeking your sympathy. I differ from a tree in that my sap rises twice yearly - once in the spring with the approach of research season, and once in the fall with the return of the cycle to teaching. While I would rather teach fewer students, you shouldn't confuse that with wanting to do less teaching. My colleagues appear equally sappy. Teaching may not be our only business, but we're serious about it.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-52985524356142489942009-03-24T10:53:00.000-07:002009-03-24T11:17:51.535-07:00Errol MorrisA friend of mine wrote to tell me that he had just watched The Thin Blue Line and in his words: "I had only read about it previously, but the real thing utterly blew my mind. I have never been so totally mesmerized by a visual narrative over a sustained period." Morris has produced what I consider the very best documentaries of the last 25 years -- but don't take my word for that. <a href="http://www.errolmorris.com/">Go to his website</a> and Youtube, and then, please, to a good video store, and discover for yourself what a relentless commitment to storytelling, to truth, to justice, and to humanity can produce. Morris teaches us about ourselves but he also has become, arguably, one of the great historians of modernity. That he mostly makes films rather than writes books and journal articles is part of my rationale: Morris understands that the image is one of modernity's greatest inventions. The image can be salvation and liberation. The image can also lead to domination and imprisonment. The image, Morris seems to understand, is both life and death.<br /><br />Here is a small reason why I am hardly alone in feeling as strongly as I do about Morris<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Rk9ymTIMAmk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Rk9ymTIMAmk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Here are the trailers for his latest two films, Standard Operating Procedure and The Fog of War. I urge everyone, everywhere, to watch these films. They will not leave you.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/que6R0kzT38&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/que6R0kzT38&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VgA98V1Ubk8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VgA98V1Ubk8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-91324312019700868622009-03-02T05:27:00.000-08:002009-03-02T06:10:07.880-08:00Mapping the RecessionRichard Florida has an <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/meltdown-geography">essay in the March 2009 edition of Atlantic Monthly</a>, and in it he provides a rather intriguing representation of the current economic malaise and the similarities / differences it has with those of the 1970s / early 1980s. Here are the paragraphs that caught my eye:<br /><br />"But that was then; the economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism. Velocity and density are not words that many people use when describing the suburbs. The economy is driven by key urban areas; a different geography is required.<br /><br />The housing bubble was the ultimate expression, and perhaps the last gasp, of an economic system some 80 years in the making, and now well past its “sell-by” date. The bubble encouraged massive, unsustainable growth in places where land was cheap and the real-estate economy dominant. It encouraged low-density sprawl, which is ill-fitted to a creative, postindustrial economy. And not least, it created a workforce too often stuck in place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance.<br /><br />So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it?"<br /><br />Florida's emphasis on rupture, discontinuity, breakage, fissuring between the relatively recent (80 year) past, the present, and the future, opens up for him a whole new way of imagining the social and physical geography of the United States. It is no longer about people's labour making things or even providing services: for Florida, the economy is all about "ideas". He points to Pittsburgh as a model example: once home to a thriving steel industry and a population of 700,000 people in the mid-20th century, it is now a city of 300,000 people focussed on high tech industries and the creative, intellectual work of its universities and colleges. So where did all the people go? They went to places like Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix that now has more than 500,000 people, the bulk of whom arrived since 1980. And what ought to happen to Mesa, Arizona? Florida says that the government should speed up and "ease" the foreclosures that are currently occurring in Mesa (and other Sun Belt suburbs) by compelling the banks to offer previous owners the chance to rent their homes from the new owners, the banks. And if people have to move, this, for Florida, is not a bad thing at all: he seems to lament a time when people were more apt to move every year. <br /><br />Movement, or what Florida likes to call "velocity", is fundamentally good because, we are told, it allows people, societies, and most importantly it seems, "the nation", to have an economy that is nimble, light-on-its-feet, adaptable, malleable. You can see why Florida has so much disdain for an economy that would strike to make material goods: unlike ideas, the making of cars, furniture, computers, and so forth, needs to be anchored in place for a long time. It requires investment, commitment, and fidelity on the part of manufacturers in the same way that workers invest, commit, and stay loyal to jobs that treat them fairly. But who would want that?<br /><br />Certainly not Richard Florida who, despite seeming to have some empathy for those being dislocated by the recent economic downturn, is fueled by a sort of anti-humanist fever for "systems" and "flows" and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism and by a willingness to allow globalization to write its own story of "inevitable" and "natural" change. With all due respect, Florida's prescriptions for the present carry with them the same set of assumptions (ideological and political) that made possible the deregulated horrors of the current condition of things. <br /><br />The narrative has to change: how we talk about "the economy" has to change. Macroeconomic mappings of the type offered by Florida are "big pictures" that pay too little attention, and offer too little understanding, to the immense burden being carried by those people who can least afford to do so. The very meaning of the word "economy", as the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us, has changed:<br /><br />"The art or science of household management, esp. with regard to expenditure. Now only in domestic economy (see DOMESTIC adj. and n. Special uses).<br /><br />The manner in which a household, or a person's private expenditure, is organized or managed. Now rare.<br /><br />The proper management of the body; (also) the rules which control a person's mode of living; regimen, diet. Obs. rare."<br /><br />What kinds of "economic" stories might we tell if we broadened our analytical lens to once again talk about what people are able to eat, how they are able to rest, how they are able to work, to relate to one another in a household?<br /><br />I am not sure what the answer to that question is, but I do know those kinds of economic stories are in short supply right now even though the demand is very high.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-65311441896439103622009-02-25T06:13:00.000-08:002009-02-25T06:15:53.803-08:00An Undeliverable Blog PostThere is a quiet, but determined assault being unleashed by the current federal government on scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. Petitions are being written, signed, and submitted by those of us affected, but I only realized how bad things were getting when the chief funding agency, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, pronounced “shirk”) sent out an email re-assuring scholars that everything was fine. Yes, they conceded, some cuts were coming, and yes, they further conceded, new funds were being earmarked for research directed towards the benefit of “business”, and yes, SSHRC would no longer be funding medical-related research in the humanities and social sciences. Of course, what else should we expect from SSHRC since its leadership has the unenviable task of representing the interests of scholars doing research in the humanities and social sciences to a federal government that has long been disdainful of its mandate and many of its members. The current president of SSHRC, Chad Gaffield, has been working tirelessly to champion our research efforts in ways that would be read more favourably by such a sceptical audience. I don’t blame anyone at SSHRC for the current state of affairs, nor their anti-Chicken Little email of reassurance. I would no doubt have written the same email should I have been in their shoes. (And I think everyone, including me, ought to be thankful I am not!) But getting that email made me feel like a coach of a professional sports team mired in a horrible losing streak who reads in the paper that his boss has given him a “vote of confidence”. Cue the fat lady; update the c.v.; call the movers. The end is nigh!<br /><br />If anyone can navigate SSHRC through these troubled waters, however, it is Chad Gaffield and while I lament the business-speak that has now infested our scholarly discourse (we need to talk about “deliverables”, for example, when we apply for funding), I also understand the practical and pragmatic reasons for this. But I will not cede ground on that which I believe to be fundamental: scholarly work should make the strange familiar, the familiar strange, and always, always, should it seek and speak truth no matter how seemingly relevant or not it is to the profit margins of business. <br /><br />And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go work on a deliverable so that I can affect a paradigm-shit in this knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-68392665775191683672009-02-18T09:40:00.000-08:002009-02-18T10:05:31.318-08:00Et tu, Iggy?The decision to cancel the planned re-enactment of the battle of the Plains of Abraham has caused a firestorm of blustering and denunciation. Feeding this has been the media's rather lazy declarations that the reason for the cancellation was the "threats of violence" posed by "the separatists." The Globe and Mail: "Separatists win Plains of Abraham battle"; The National Post: "Quebec separatist army claims victory". <br /><br />James Moore, current federal Heritage Minister re-cycled this same line of argument, lamenting the decision to cancel the event in language like this: "“I think the Bloc Québécois and those who played politics with this event …, to the detriment of recognizing a fact of Canadian history, have done a real disservice to the City of Quebec,” (Globe and Mail, 17 February 2009). His ignorance pales, alas, when compared to that of someone who ought to know better: "Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff lamented the debate surrounding the re-enactment of the battle was hijacked by sovereigntists. "What I don't like, frankly, is that sovereigntists are trying to dominate a free debate. As someone who likes Canada and knows a thing or two about its history, I want to have my say," Ignatieff told reporters at a separate event in Quebec City." (Ottawa Citizen, 17 February 2009). The comments of Moore and Ignatieff have been echoed, and given a much more virulent tone, in the Comments section on various media websites where a nationwide (and beyond) public has been thundering its general outrage. <br /><br />To be fair, there have been many voices speaking differently, both in the Comments section of these sites and in the media itself. As the CBC reported on its website: "However, Sylvain Rocheleau, a spokesperson for Le Réseau du résistance du Québécois, said he was not convinced by the reason given. "We were a bit surprised that they cancelled the event because of fear of violent acts," said Rocheleau. He said any threats of violence or confrontation came from a small minority of the overall movement against the re-enactment. "I think the commission wants us to believe they cancelled the event following threats from extremist movements," said Rocheleau. "[I think] they had to cancel the event because it was insulting a majority of francophones. They had to cancel it because it was a bad idea."<br /><br />The free Metro newspaper ran an editorial cartoon this morning (18 February 2009) that seeks to visualize all of this as follows:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgwHuY1yVRvw0AZgQp2jgyFW3uZpXVKhZ4NYAZ5tV3THe5wdeNCD-MB4bpBqULOlPj4OVYhEIuv8uARQscYyvtyqp31U1Zcp5GNG-b7A5CRZdlODNkiOmIcnbyOEnTZu9mCbxP7hQJSlo/s1600-h/metro+image+of+plains+debate.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgwHuY1yVRvw0AZgQp2jgyFW3uZpXVKhZ4NYAZ5tV3THe5wdeNCD-MB4bpBqULOlPj4OVYhEIuv8uARQscYyvtyqp31U1Zcp5GNG-b7A5CRZdlODNkiOmIcnbyOEnTZu9mCbxP7hQJSlo/s320/metro+image+of+plains+debate.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304198226362718850" /></a><br /><br /><br />It is comforting to think that "HISTORY" and "POLITICS" are separated by some nebulous "GREY AREA" but this episode reveals, again, that HISTORY and POLITICS are always on the same bookshelf, struggling with each other for space, to have their spines prominent, their stories told. All history is political, and all politics have history. To pretend it is otherwise is to continue to re-cycle, re-circulate, and re-inscribe the wonderful, terrible subjectivity of history as objective fact. Dr. Ignatieff may know "one or two things", and in fact he knows a lot more. But he has forgotten about the present's enduring role in the past and thus he, too, seems unaware that lots of folks, self-identified "separatists" and otherwise, rejected these re-enactments because they made no sense to our efforts to forge a better collective present. The real debate here should not be about why the re-enactment was cancelled, it should be about why it was even considered.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-16656068885857057772009-02-04T05:14:00.000-08:002009-02-09T05:52:41.585-08:00Canada Bound May 1953<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVyz04rtLwK3fh_8RuzGGm7OAG1FNspVogLtjEvG_uU3yH2lYfvvW7JP7romYY5Lnf9ydFQFzCgbtiWkyAsnFfsW5AsFr03H7inIgLTTF5LEzz6QRhIv0FMgW3kZI0RYurHpPyKC9FcjQ/s1600-h/Canada+Bound+++May+1953++e.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 309px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVyz04rtLwK3fh_8RuzGGm7OAG1FNspVogLtjEvG_uU3yH2lYfvvW7JP7romYY5Lnf9ydFQFzCgbtiWkyAsnFfsW5AsFr03H7inIgLTTF5LEzz6QRhIv0FMgW3kZI0RYurHpPyKC9FcjQ/s320/Canada+Bound+++May+1953++e.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298930316989500786" /></a><br /><br />Every immigrant kid has a picture like this. Often the picture is a photograph, maybe one in a series of photographs arranged in one of those pre-digital photograph albums, trapped beneath the clear-plastic cover that was intended to shield the photograph from the dirty fingers of eager kids and the coffee and cake crumbs that always seem nearby when an album was opened up. Those big, heavy pages would be turned and each reveal would bring a new (old) story about who was in the photograph, where it was taken, when it was taken, and so forth. I don’t recall many photographs, much less an album, documenting my mother’s family emigration from West Germany and immigration to Canada but even though there were few photographs, there were lots of stories. And so long before I saw the photograph above, I knew this picture.<br /><br />It is more accurate to say that I <span style="font-style:italic;">thought</span> I knew this picture. The dark-haired girl with the pigtails, eyes cast down to the ground, is my mother. My mother was one of two people who helped me draw a picture about leaving West Germany in 1953 and coming to Canada, the other being my Opa, the man standing right behind my mother. As storytellers, they always described for me what they saw: my mother, for example, telling me stories about her impish little sister being spoiled on the steamship by the Italian crew and delighting them with her cutesy looks and behaviour; Opa telling me about the tragedy of making the decision to come to Canada primarily because of the scholarly genius already shown by their eldest daughter, Doris (back row, far right), who, only a year after arriving, died from complications resulting from a burst appendix. I heard funny stories, sad stories, exceptional stories, and everyday stories. I heard stories about all the other people in that photograph and even about the person taking the photograph, my uncle Horst. Despite all of the stories they told me, I lost track of these storytellers being in the picture, especially my mother. But there she is. In the picture.<br /><br />Narrators rarely appeared in the stories I loved as a kid, especially comic books. I might have been able to read Batman’s thoughts (his doubts about vigilantism, his self-awareness of an aging body beneath the rubberized suit, his frustration when, sigh, Dick Grayson / Robin entered his life) but the adventure he was engaged in got its narrative thrust from the God-like perspective provided by the images and by the multi-perspective dialogue crafted by comic writers. Comic books shaped my earliest understandings of narrative and they also shaped the picture I made of my background as the child of an immigrant.<br /><br />Very innocuously, my mother e-mailed me the above photograph asking if I had a better copy of it. <span style="font-style:italic;">A better copy?!</span> I did not even know what I was looking at when I first opened the e-mail’s attachment, for I had never seen this picture. But there, at the top of my picture viewer, was the title my uncle Claus had assigned it when he scanned the original, taken from what was scratched and faded across the back of the original: Canada Bound May 1953.<br /><br />Here was an old photograph. Here was a new picture.<br /><br />*****************************************************************<br /><br />Update: My mother continues to re-make the picture. She sent me a new version of my Opa's memoirs, edited by my Uncle Claus, and it included, among other things, this image:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0jLqJpDFEuNoEb0eus3QZA0ZX0TtAsk8mz7n0DKCdi6K5H6XuECC0m3g1nJRnX7FLYYdWDxxYojI7FW8gzhnyYJly3AIgja-yNINo7U1T-PuMUmvjSAiBnbNPUYeTd65taTheIpMt7Rs/s1600-h/Cleve+Family+early+1960s%3F.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0jLqJpDFEuNoEb0eus3QZA0ZX0TtAsk8mz7n0DKCdi6K5H6XuECC0m3g1nJRnX7FLYYdWDxxYojI7FW8gzhnyYJly3AIgja-yNINo7U1T-PuMUmvjSAiBnbNPUYeTd65taTheIpMt7Rs/s320/Cleve+Family+early+1960s%3F.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300792884432431042" /></a><br /><br />Thanks, Mom.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-41083662068403910932009-01-30T04:39:00.000-08:002009-01-30T04:48:42.165-08:00Monumentality in Post-Bush Iraq<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVffKse_DEIxgBfgK0DPbTdqysmXv5DEe4migppTKdHQz8VNmmNow61Owr8TEhZMcGQIFjjXAnU_zy3v8il6qgmMIXYkurpWhAU-6Z5D2DrmwFVixHAZg0WdI2wbjKThvoV2H49qY5ck/s1600-h/art.shoe.monument.cnn.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 219px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVffKse_DEIxgBfgK0DPbTdqysmXv5DEe4migppTKdHQz8VNmmNow61Owr8TEhZMcGQIFjjXAnU_zy3v8il6qgmMIXYkurpWhAU-6Z5D2DrmwFVixHAZg0WdI2wbjKThvoV2H49qY5ck/s320/art.shoe.monument.cnn.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297066299371330146" /></a><br /><br /><br />BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- For the war-beaten orphans of the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, this big old shoe fits. A monument to a shoe thrown at former President Bush is unveiled at the Tikrit Orphanage complex. A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush in December during a trip to Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.<br /><br />Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in Baghdad.<br /><br />Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators in December took to the streets in the Arab world and called for his release.<br /><br />The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide.<br /><br />The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure -- unveiled Tuesday -- in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director.<br /><br />"Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush's war," al-Naseri said. "The shoe monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist."<br /><br />"When the next generation sees the shoe monument, they will ask their parents about it," al-Naseri said.<br /><br />"Then their parents will start talking about the hero Muntadhir al-Zaidi, who threw his shoe at George W. Bush during his unannounced farewell visit."<br /><br />Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader toppled by the United States in 2003, was from the Tikrit region.<br /><br />Al-Zaidi marked his 30th birthday in jail earlier this month. One of his brothers said he is "in good health and is being treated well."<br /><br />Al-Zaidi's employer, TV network al-Baghdadia, keeps a picture of him at the top left side of the screen with a calendar showing the number of days he has spent in detention. The network has been calling for his release.<br /><br />By tradition, throwing a shoe is the most insulting act in the Arab world. <br /><br />**************************************<br /><br />I think the last sentence in that CNN report (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/29/iraq.shoe.monument/index.html">see original here</a>) is one of the master strokes of insipid journalism, but, for me, it is the icing on this cake of wonderfulness. Somehow, someway, I will need to tell this story the next time I speak about monumentalism and public memory. I just hope I don't ruin it by talking about it.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-85034490227643779782009-01-27T08:07:00.000-08:002009-01-27T08:20:18.615-08:00Governmentality -- This Time with FeelingThe emergence of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?q=Foucault+College+de+France+lectures&source=in&sa=X&oi=book_group&resnum=11&ct=title&cad=bottom-3results">Michel Foucault's College de France lectures</a> are starting to shift the scholarly landscape in some interesting, exciting ways. This is perhaps strongest around Foucault's concept of "governmentality" which constituted all of ONE published essay, the well-known collection <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=57993">The Foucault Effect</a>. That single lecture was actually taken from the middle of a series of lectures Foucault was giving on security, territory, and population. (This brilliant summary by me is actually the title of the book that all these lectures now appear.) Read back in this context, governmentality starts to be more wide-ranging than was once thought (especially with respect to the role of the state) and more intelligible than the earlier, sole essay conveyed. <br /><br />Reading those lectures a couple of years ago, I realized that my own book on governmentality would need to be re-considered and I am really glad for it. Books like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-VvCHuGOPWwC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=legg+spaces+of+colonialism&source=web&ots=ZNPUHqzU0f&sig=UPQnCU4wVzYKmNLZzX5vHQwwHDA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP1,M1">Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism (2008)</a> and essays by folks like Stuart Elden, Jeremy Crompton, among others, are giving me a very useful community of scholars with whom to re-consider governmentality as an analytical concept.<br /><br />Now, of course, it is time to get this book done and join that conversation!John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-89833144306352107992009-01-23T05:40:00.000-08:002009-01-23T05:51:14.814-08:00History, Historians, and the NewsHere is why I am often "unavailable" when contacted by the media.<br /><br />From the newswires;<br /><br />"A Canadian government-sponsored initiative to re-enact the Battle of the Plains of Abraham this summer has baffled the small group of historians in France who specialize in Canadian history. The National Battlefields Commission is helping to finance the re-creation this summer to mark the 250th anniversary of the 1759 victory by British forces over the French at Quebec City. This year's event, involving up to 3,000 volunteers, has triggered consternation in Quebec over whether a folkloric celebration involving history buffs could inflame Quebec nationalist sentiment. Many nationalists view the battle as a humiliating defeat and the start of English domination over French-speaking inhabitants of North America. French historians have similar concerns about the wisdom of the re-enactment, and even question the battle's historical significance. "This is stupid," said University of Caen historian Andre Zysberg. "This celebration of a military event will just revive old political, religious and ethnic antagonisms. It is the use of history as a political weapon." Francoise Le Jeune, who heads the University of Nantes' Centre for the Study of Canada, said it is important for a young country like Canada to find unifying landmarks."<br /><br />I am always impressed by scholarly discourse that includes the expression "This is stupid." Who wouldn't be? Now I doubt Professor Zysberg said to the reporter, "okay, is the recording device working? Good. Here comes my opinion on this issue: This is stupid. Did you get that? Should I repeat it? No? Good. I look forward to the article. Good bye." (If this was, in fact, what happened, then I have a whole other kind of respect for this quotation.) But the dreaded sound-byte mentality of contemporary media makes reflective, and, yes, digressive, discourse nearly impossible. This is hardly news -- although if it were it would be "Media is Stupid!" --but it still breaks my heart. <br /><br />But the above article is useful for it reminds us that when you want to really get insight into the politics of memory and history involved with something like the re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the first stop better be specialists of Canadian history working in France. I feel better knowing this.<br /><br />Ugh.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-77900698766410381242009-01-20T04:50:00.000-08:002009-01-20T04:56:15.823-08:00Audacity of Hope<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXsBs88WbuD0AZzJKcASKnp69xFJlJHpXk9f0i1tVQYApMgNMsz33akRxoYeZzUwPEOLJh78lUvhhWGf7GSF4q-PFtb0pFGip54AiuRDk5apQUaHJGd8k5tQ7JM-gvpvr_x1QYrvbRN0/s1600-h/obama+hope+poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXsBs88WbuD0AZzJKcASKnp69xFJlJHpXk9f0i1tVQYApMgNMsz33akRxoYeZzUwPEOLJh78lUvhhWGf7GSF4q-PFtb0pFGip54AiuRDk5apQUaHJGd8k5tQ7JM-gvpvr_x1QYrvbRN0/s320/obama+hope+poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293358886174482866" /></a><br /><br />Cynical as I want to be about the possibility of effective, lasting, and meaningful change, I am succumbing to the winds of hope blowing up here from Washington, D.C.. It has put into motion for me the idea of a research paper on how the Canadian media responded to Lincoln's two inaugural addresses, especially the now-mythic second one given at the end of the American Civil War. Today, though, it is about the audacity of hope.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-47229175010952739832009-01-15T07:12:00.000-08:002009-01-15T07:32:07.626-08:00Place, Memory, and YoutubeThe family album, travel diary, and scrapbook is still alive and well in the digital age, except now it appears in websites like Flickr and Youtube. Historians are S-L-O-W-L-Y coming to terms with all this, and public historians and historians interested in memory, have been quickest off the mark. I have had really good success teaching undergraduate students (a first-year class in "Landscape and History" and a third-year class in "Historical Representations") taking advantage of the accessibility of these digital archives. Here is what we do:<br /><br />1) Students are asked to read Steve High, "Deindustrializing Youngstown: Memories of Resistance and Loss following ‘Black Monday’, 1977–1997," <span style="font-style:italic;">History Workshop Journal</span>, 54, 1 (2002): 100-121.<br /><br />In that article, Steve makes several important points, but among these is how the narratives of loss told about Youngstown, including those by Bruce Springstreen in his "Youngstown", followed closely the narratives of loss told about the American Midwest during the Great Depression, by people like John Steinbeck.<br /><br />2) Before discussing Steve's article in much depth, I begin class by showing the following:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVXYzcb3r-w&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVXYzcb3r-w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Not only do students "get it", more importantly this exercise opens up far ranging discussions about the urge to document place, self, community and so forth, through things like mash-up music videos. They wander back into their own experiences, and those of their family, and start to talk about things like "family albums, travel diaries, and scrapbooks". This requires only a modest amount of intervention from me. Students have a terrific capacity for, and interest in, working through stuff from their own lives but from a perspective they had not yet considered. To me this is what being in a university classroom is all about.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-242751165113711672009-01-12T04:38:00.000-08:002009-01-12T04:58:48.925-08:00Revising, Revising, Revising<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chabon">Michael Chabon</a> is the best wordsmith in American literature. He writes sentences that make other writers (read: me) weep with a combination of joy and envy. I sometimes read his writing aloud to better savour, and deconstruct, the rhythm of his prose. My respect for Chabon was deepened, however, when I read, listened to, and watched a number of interviews he gave in support of his most recent books, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Yiddish Policemen's Union</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Maps and Legends</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Gentlemen of the Road</span>. He talked a lot about the process and, lo and behold, here was the "secret" to his remarkable writing: discipline. He writes everyday, from 9-3, aiming for a minimum of 1000 worthy words. While also blessed with more than a trace of talent, Chabon's story is in many respects unexceptional. He puts his butt in a chair, his fingers on the keyboard, and gets to work.<br /><br />I have been thinking of Chabon quite a bit these days as two readers' reports have me (and my co-author) grinding hard on revisions. There is no way to shortcut this process and, if I am honest, I would be saddened if there were: the suffering, sleeplessness, and frustration of revision is also one of the strangest pleasures a writer has. <br /><br />Revise, revise, revise.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1471279672950368243.post-47310945787127164372009-01-05T10:49:00.000-08:002009-01-05T10:59:47.248-08:00Teaching and ReadingToday marks the start of my graduate class. I love this class because I get to listen to, and learn from, a group of very smart people who, if I have done my job correctly, are reading good historical writing. As much as any course I have ever taught, this one is the most revealing about my own (professional) self. And it is also the class in which I say, by far, the least. Terrifying but also exciting...at least as these things go for academics.<br /><br />We start with one of the finest books written in Canadian history: Alan Greer's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=IM10gt3hRUYC&dq=mohawk+saint&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result">Mohawk Saint</a>. I have recommended this book to all sorts of readers, inside and outside the university, and have yet to hear a bad word about it. It is a book about a remarkable historical figure, about a fascinating and distant historical era, and yet it is also a book that manages to be about history and about historians without losing a focus on the story and its actors. I have read it three times cover-to-cover and learn something new every time. What a great way to start my teaching in 2009.John C. Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01119289182165530103noreply@blogger.com