What is history to you?

This week’s readings took a bit of a departure from what we discussed the previous week. The three selections each had their own feel and disparate focal points. The main reading for the week was Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of history in American Life, which was co-authored by David Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig. Thelen and Rosenzweig presented us with a work which was to give us insight to the ways in which everyday people use and/or create history within their daily lives. Thelen and Rosenzweig used data compiled from a survey they created with the assistance of other historians.

After a while, I felt this book to be repetitive in the manner they chose to present their information. I mean there are a number of charts which provide us with the quantitative data that reinforces the qualitative analysis they discuss during the body of the book. I became frustrated in what I saw as the overuse of respondent quotes. I believe they overused the quotes to hammer home the point but I think it just trivialized their potential impact.

I truly think this book has great value and it forces us to think about some very important questions and ideas as public historians. Historians would be arrogant to believe they have sole ownership in the creating of what history is. Thelen and Rosenzweig present a picture in which history is an important part of peoples’ everyday lives. The ways in which people interpret, create and process history fluctuates and history can have a variety of different meanings.

I think this book left me with more questions than answers but that’s where I see its strength. We need to see history as something more than just within the academy, and if we are to see history in such a way, we must meet the public where they are. Thelen and Rosenzweig provide tools to begin this type of understanding.

Public History?

I have to admit I was a bit nervous coming into this week’s readings. This was the first set of readings that could decidedly be called Public History. Do I read them differently than books from my other classes? Instead of worrying about that I just jumped right in.

I think Tyrrell’s piece made the biggest impression on me this week. Granted, it was the longest piece we had to read but I believe there was a lot to chew-on between the covers. In essence, Tyrrell gave a history of historians and their interactions with the “public”. Throughout the book, he made reference to Peter Novick’s, That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession and Historians in Public had a very similar feel. Both books presented a comprehensive account of the central figures and movements within the field. To a certain extent, Historians in Public can be seen as complimentary work to Novick while at the same time being an extension. Public Historians have grown out of the professionalization of history.

Though I found myself struggling to get through sections of Historians I believe Tyrrell’s book to be the perfect introduction to this semester of work. Before we begin a semester of analyzing and parsing what it means to be a “public historian”, we are presented with a framework to understand the evolution of the field. Using his historical account, a pattern of conflict between “public” and “academic” history becomes apparent.

I’m not sure if this book will go down as the most exciting read for the semester, I know it will prove invaluable as we progress through the course. I mean Professor Bruggeman chose it to be our first book.

Time to Press the Clutch and Shift Gears

Ok, so the title of this post was cheesy but most of my titles have been cheesy. The summer has ended, I've concluded my internship and I'm back to school. Life, and my blog, will be shifting gears. While I still plan to use my blog as a vehicle for my musings about urban space, it will mainly be devoted to my Introduction to Public History course. In essence, this will be my first post for class and it's an introduction to my classmates. I have to admit this will be a bit strange, an introduction eight posts into the life of my blog? Oh well. We do what we've got to do. So here it goes.

My name is Javier Garcia and I am a second-year MA student in the Public History program here at Temple University. My research interests are in twentieth-century American urban history. Specifically, I am interested in how cities and neighborhoods have developed. My MA thesis will be about the proposed Crosstown Expressway which was to be built along South Street here in Philadelphia.

I graduated with my BA from Haverford College in the Growth & Structure of Cities program. The interdisciplinary nature of the department has greatly influenced my graduate work. My undergraduate work in Architecture and Urban Planning are still present in my non-traditional path through Public History. While most students traditionally take archives and manuscript courses, my supplemental coursework has been in the Community and Regional Planning department at Temple. While I haven't set my sights on a specific career, I hope to do work which can fuse my interest in Public History and Urban Planning.

Articles, More Articles and the Future

So, the past few two-weeks of work have consisted on putting together a short literature review for Professor Bruggeman. The goal of this assignment was to compile a number of articles from the scholarly journals of the History, Public History and Planning fields. I was to focus my attention on articles which bridged the gap between theory and practice. Specifically, how GIS technology and Public History intersect?

On the surface, the assignment should have been straight-forward but unfortunately I struggled. I was able to find a few articles which explicitly fused GIS and historical research. These articles proved to be amazingly dynamic in combining what seemed to be two divergent research techniques. I learned a lot about this new direction of historical discourse. By no means do I see GIS becoming de rigueur in History, but it was refreshing to see the use of newer technologies.

As I moved away from these initial articles, I had to broaden my article search. Instead of finding articles which precisely suited my needs, I looked for articles which had themes in either the field of Public History or Planning and could be applicable to the other. The two major themes I highlighted were access and the use, and future, of technology. I won't go into details but scholars and practitioners made a variety of arguments. Some surprised me while others challenged my perceptions of each field. Now that I have had time to process this experience, it got me thinking about my future path.

I've let my interests guide the direction I've taken my studies and I also hope it will take me to a career which excites me. Unfortunately, my interest don't easily align. There is some crossover but they don't fit nicely into each other like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. As with this assignment, it can be a challenge to find a field that meets all my requirements. I know what I like but at times even I struggle to define it. This makes me fearful of where I go after school is finished. Where do I work? What kind of work do I hope to do? I know I have time to figure this out but it'll be here before I know it. Have my varied interests provided me with wide-ranging options or just painted me into a corner? I guess time will tell.

The Gallery at Market East

When you live in downtown Philadelphia, and you're craving a cinnamon-sugar pretzel, Bourbon Chicken samples and a new pair of sneakers, who says you need to travel to King of Prussia, Plymouth Meeting or Cherry Hill for the mall. Directly in our own downtown one can find all these mall features at The Gallery at Market East.

Originally opened in 1977 as part of a redevelopment project, the mall has become a fixture on Market Street. The mall's central location makes access relatively easy. There are a number of bus lines which have stops just outside its doors and the mall is located on top of Septa's Market East Station. I see car-free alternatives as being one of the main factors to the mall's success. The Gallery offers mall shopping to many who don't have their own transportation and I can only assume this to be one of the selling-points when the mall was in its planning stages.

For the first eight-months after I graduated from college, I worked in a mall so I didn't think The Gallery would surprise me. I mean, I think when you've seen one mall you've seen them all. Suffice to say, I was surprised during my stroll through the urban mall. The standard players were visible: Footlocker, Borders, the Food Court, Wet Seal, music stores as well as jewelers. This is pretty much standard fare for the mall. What did surprise me was the produce market, fresh seafood market and butcher shop on the ground floor. When was the last time you saw a fresh produce store in your local mall? In this type of setting, I have never known of a place where I can buy cds, sneakers and a half-pound of salmon. I’m still haven’t fully processed my thoughts on the markets.

Walking through The Gallery made me consider the place of urban malls. How successful are they and what is their necessity? Should these dens of consumerism be the cornerstone of redevelopment? I see the growth of urban malls as being another layer in the push for renewed interest in our cities. You can’t bring people into the city without giving them a place to buy their goods. Also, what effect do urban malls have on independently owned shops? All these points deserve significant consideration.

As of right now, it seems the urban mall is here to stay. With the presence of other malls such as, The Manhattan Mall, Newport Center Mall, The Shops at Columbus Circle and Atlantic Terminal Mall offering easy access fostering greater economic growth, it’s just a reality with which we have to contend. It isn’t just the suburbanites who should have the pleasure of listening to Muzak.

Disclaimer:  I hoped to have pictures of the inside in this post but post-9/11 security does not allow photography of the interior.

A Change in Scenery

The majority of my summer internship has kept me in the computer lab of the Design School at Penn. I can't complain because I get to be in an air-conditioned lab, researching, and being around some the next generation of great planner. This past week took me back to a place I got to know very well during second semester, the Urban Archives at Temple University. I spent the spring researching the Crosstown Expressway for a research seminar course. While I wasn't going back to work on the Crosstown, expressways were still my focus. The main difference was I was looking-up information on an expressway which was built, the Delaware Expressway (I-95).

The goal of the trip was to search the newspaper clippings to find personal stories which could be mapped. I was amazed to see how long the controversy over the expressway lasted. Thinking about the Delaware provided me with the chance to think about highways in a different light. The Crosstown, which was never realized, united a broad community and they were successful in showing what the human impact of an expressway would be. On the other-hand, I-95, which was built, has become an integral part of current-day Philadelphia transportation network. Is there ever a morning where you don't hear about congestion or an accident during rush-hour? I didn't think so.

I am constantly torn over how I think about highways. In our modern society they are a necessary evil. Imagine thousands of cars traveling through the streets of Philadelphia had it not been for the highways. In one of my earlier posts, I stated how I believed in the human-scale and taking into account what the personal impact of projects can be. Highways are projects which can have one of the greatest effects on a community, but I just can't find a way to reconcile highways. With our ever-growing dependency on the personal auto, highways are needed. If only we could find ways to make them less intrusive. This might not be possible but one can only hope.

Adventures in Babysitting and The City

I am proud say I am an '80s baby. I guess most people are proud of the decade in which they were born and I think the 80s were no exception. Personally, I love 80s pop-culture - especially movies. These were the movies I grew up watching on VHS and they defined my early youth. Unfortunately, some of these movies haven't withstood the test of time and watching them as an adult can be a bit of a disappointment. The magic of a movie from my childhood sometimes does not transfer to my highly sophisticated 28 year old standards (although the Never Ending Story is a classic - 28 or 8, it is still one of the best films ever made). While we can't always look to older movies in order to re-live some much loved childhood memories, we can enjoy older movies for what they embody: a specific period in time. Older movies can serve as a time capsule, a window, into the social norms, culture, humor, and values of decades long gone. Ah yes...decades in which high-tops, Michael J Fox, and wood paneled station wagons were rockin. 

Last week, one of those "oldies but goodies" came on tv. There was no way I could pass on watching Adventures in Babysitting.For the sake of the post length, here is a link for a synopsis of the movie. The movie embellishes city life but there was an unintentional commentary of urban life in the late '80s. To the suburban teenagers in the movie, Chicago is seen as a wild place. A place where anything can happen and danger lurks around every corner. In essence, the movie satirizes the urban crisis of the late '80s, especially within the older cities of the East. Unemployment, recession and the crack epidemic all contributed to instilling a certain level of fear regarding our cities; the movie highlights the ills of the city.

I also believe this movie can serve as a testament to how far our cities have come in the three decades. Through the time, energy and money of various entities, we've started to re-claim our cities as places of culture and excitement, not fear and despair. In no way do I believe the work in our ciites is finished. The widespread levels of inequity are too obvious to overlook but "the city" has once again become a cultural center. A place where you go to enrich your life, not endanger it.

Even at the end of this post, I'm still shocked how a movie such as Adventures would challenge me to think critically about urban space. I guess inspiration can be found anywhere...even amidst high-tops and leggings.