Public historians and the great advertising corporation?

In Prof. Vance's class, a one-page article about the massacre of the MacIans in Glen Coe in 1962 was given to us. Prof. Vance asked us to compress the whole article into 80 words in terms of a plaque. We were divided into three groups and worked on the plaque separately within 20 minutes.

It is a smart way to show how public historians introduce a certain history to the public. Our group decided to demonstrate the "fact" of the massacre. So the information about the time when it happened, reason why it happened, way of how it happened, people who killed, and people who were killed were the main points put in our plaque. Comparing to the other two groups, these are also the main points they decided to put in their plaques. Although the way of constructing these information are obviously a little different among the three groups, the main tone is the same: as subjective as possible. To be honest, history is not as interesting as historical story or legend, and reading history written in this way is a little boring.

Prof. Vance plaque showed us the plaque he wrote later. It is much a little different from ours. The view on the massacre reflected from his plaque seems to stand on the side of the victims in Glen Coe, and two aspects are accented: the reason of the massacre and the end of the story. In terms of the reason, Prof. Vance stresses the role of the massacre, which is considered to be an example of punishment by the government when the chief of Glen Coe failed to show his loyalty to the King William III. When it comes to the end of the short article, Prof. Vance uses numbers of the victims and the escape of the others into hill to finish the whole plaque.

I think, the most interesting point in Prof. Vance's plaque is that it is not a complete story. There is no mention of what happened later to the people who escaped into the hill, like we did in our plaques, clearing that the Glen Coe was granted protection by the government later. However, this incompletion is very attractive to me because it actually evokes my interest and encourages me to find out more about the massacre. This is an good example to show how history is presented by historians, and the reaction to this presentation. 

When it comes to tourism, this reaction is one of the purposes public historians want to achieve for a historical site or museum project, because there is no doubt that money could help preserve the history. Then, whether public historians have become a part of the great advertising corporation of today? I have not figure out this interesting question I ask myself, but since it is interesting, I will pay much attention to it.

 

Some thoughts about Oral history

Oral history is an very interesting topic. It reminds me of one of my classmates' dissertation that oral resources are archives. As an archives researcher I disagreed with her based on a core archival principle: archives are the spontaneous products along with the process of a certain event in terms of written-paper, tapes, videos and other forms of media, and obviously, oral history is out of this concept, because it is not produced spontaneously, but delayed in time. My viewpoint invoked a big argument among the professors, guest session chair and my classmates. And it turned out that only one of the professors clearly agreed with me. I still insist in my position and I don't think it is a good idea to put oral history into the category of archives.

First of all, to put the oral history into the category of archives reflects an intention to expand of the concept of archives. It is not deniable that archival work gets more and more social recognition in China since 1980s, and the completion or construction of archives in city capitals, universities, companies, and other institutions  are undergoing smoothly and quickly, but it doesn't mean the role of archives as the social "information foundation" has ever been changed, and it is not a wise step to collect as many kinds of materials as they can by vesting them in the category of archives while isolating itself from museums and libraries. The problems, such as the capacity of archives, the cost and maintenance, the human and physical resources, etc would be big burdens for archives to take into account. I still think the most   emergent and challenge thing for archives to do is to give more accesses to the collections already in existence to the public, in which Chinese archivists have already done a good job.

Oral history offers more aspects about a story or event, and this is the most attractive thing for me. Alessandro Portelli in The Peculiarities of Oral History says that "there are no "false" oral sources", but it is really hard to abandon the concept of "false". When I was doing research in the June Fourth 1989, I watched a video Tiananmen by Carmelita Carma Hinton, wellkonwn as Carma in China, an American author who was born in China and participated in Cultural Revolution as a member of Red Guards. One interviewee in this tape gives me a lot thoughts. His name is Wang Dan, one student leader in that student movement. According to this video, Wang told the interviewer that he advocated the students to give up the occupation of Tiananmen Square at the end of May 1989, because the Square at that time was a real dump and the spirit of that student movement seemed to be lost. However these words were later refuted by another important student leader, Feng Congde, saying that Wang was one of the student leaders advocating to go on occupying the Square until the end, and Feng questioned that Wang's purpose was to deny the democratic nature of the student movement and made conformation with the CCP for his own image.  Leaving Carma's background and purpose of making this video, this video is kind of a good example to reflect one nature of the oral history, that is interviewee's views changed with time, either on purpose or not.

After all, oral history is a very interesting and unfamiliar area for me, and I would like to explore funny stories about it.                      

Dissecting Dr. William Harvey

Dissecting Dr. William Harvey is much easier than I thought. Before this project started, William Harvey to me is just a name, a famous name in my Chinese textbook that his theory of blood circulation sets up a milestone in medicine history, and that's all I know about him. I never did further research in him or his theories before, because medicine historian is never my choice. But this situation always reminds me of some interesting experiences I meet with all the time, even I am in Canada.

A few days ago, I joined in a New Year Eve party held by some Chinese students and made dumplings together, which is the indispensable food for us to celebrate the beginning of a new year. After learned of my major, they got so excited that a various of historical questions were listed quickly in front of me for proof, most of which I had no idea of. So I had to play the card again "I am a historian, but not an encyclopedia ......" I shocked them by the fact that I did not all the things that had happened in history, and another day I also shocked Marri-Ann, one of my roommates who is doing research in medicine and therapy in the Western, that I was doing research in William Harvey. She recommended me a book related to the blood circulation and told me that my major was awesome! I laughed a lot and could not help wondering that maybe I would ask myself a question what I should know and what should not.

Back to my topic! Dissecting Harvey is not that hard, and I cut him into little pieces, such as his theories including blood circulation, muscular movement，generation, embryo, liver, heart and spirit; his methodology including his research purpose, difficulties, criticism, and relations among his three main books; his life including his personality, precursors, friends, enemies, etc. Then I realize that I am really not a doctor, because the dissected body of Harvey is a mess. I find it is a little hard for me to reconstruct the main points of Harvey and introduce him to others.

The reason why I relate my research work to the medical dissection is that I read an interesting article. It is William Harvey's Prelectiones: The performance of the body in the Renaissance Theater of Anatomy by Luke Wilson. In his article, Wilson tells a tradition in the sphere of medicine during Harvey's times. After the dissection of a body, either human beings or animals, a special ritual would follow, in which all the dissected parts would be put back into the body and buried in grave. When I was reading this article, it reminded me of the confusing situation I faced and it eased my nerves by humoring myself.

I am really grateful that I have worked with different groups to figure out that question, after all, it is a group project and I learned a lot from my classmates. Although I was frustrated by the software of edisum, it still was worth of spending some time on learning new things. At present, I participated in the Arm Projector Group, working on a projector, which is used to show the idea of blood circulation in a person's arm. I am enjoying sharing the information with my group members and I believe we will come up with great idea together!

Issues and characteristics related to asylums

When reading the book The Confinement of the insane: international perspectives, 1800-1965 by Porter Roy and David Wright, it is obvious that a number of the city asylums around the world are under research during the period from 19th century to late 20th. Some of these asylums focus on the unique characteristics due to their historical, cultural, economic, and geographic reasons, such as the Roddben Island Lunatic Asylum in South Africa, the Cery and Bel-Air asylums in Switzerland, and the Wittenauer Heilstatten in Germany; some focus on some certain related to the process of confinement, such as the South Carolina Luna Asylum in the United States, Victorian asylums in Australia and Parisian asylum. No matter what their focuses are, these asylums give me a lot of hints to examine the main issues and characteristics related asylums.

One issue is race-bias. Both the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum in South Africa and the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum in the United States concern with this issue. The Robben Island Lunatic Asylum located near to Cape Town, the capital city of Cape Colony in the 19th century, and this historical cause explained the different admission or diagnostic patterns for various racial groups. The tendency is that fewer black patients than white were admitted to Robben Island Asylum; greater medical concerned about white insanity and the stereotyped perception that black insanity was less complex. As to the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum in the United States, the large black and slave population made race a much more significant issue.

The second issue is police. the Victorian asylums in Australia is a classic example to the understanding this. The purpose of the European immigrants to Australia was to set up a penal colony and police played an important part in the confinement of the insane from its very beginning. The existence of police guaranteed the committals within the communities to be sent to the asylum according to the statutes and courts, and kept the lunatics on trial release from the asylum under surveillance. The judgement of police is influenced greatly by culture, gender and race and foreigner were usually considered to be insane. And in Victorian Canada, a big number of Irish were considered to be insane.

Another is gender. In the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, male patients under detention dominated constantly in number, because men were generally considered to be more violent than women, and another reason was due to the large number of criminals transfered from prison to the asylum were men. In Victorian Australia in the latter part of the 19th century, the potential disorder of women's sexual difference created some police anxiety and significant numbers of women were considered to be insane. In Canada, Ontario asylums conformed to the colonial patter that male patients occupied a significantly high number in the first two decades, and then a rebalancing by female patients. The length of stay and transformation is inclined that women stayed a longer period than man. Other aspects, such as etilogical factor, diagnostic patterns, admission passages, are also different from the male insane.