The Lamplight of Industrialization Still Aglow in Lowell, Massachusetts

Walking around Lowell National Historic Park transports you back to the days of Lowell’s former industrial glory. Its factory history is notably evident in the brick buildings that line the streets; old-fashioned store signs and facades testify to the manufacturing greatness of Lowell in the mid to late 19th century. Any building in the downtown area can attest to the storied past of the city as the heart of industry in the United States. Many of the old factory buildings overlooking the Merrimack River have been turned into attractive luxury apartment rentals. Without losing its charm, the Palmer Street Engine 3 Firehouse became Fuse Bistro around 1972. But the stone etchings and architectural styling still mark the building as the firehouse it once was.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum: An Overload of the Senses

As a summer intern at a Manhattan museum, I had the chance to visit the National September 11 Memorial and Museum just a month after it opened. As a public history student, I sort of knew what to expect, but I was definitely not ready for the experience.

Where Is the Collection?

I wanted to find out how the representation of Communism and the Cuban missile crisis has changed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum since it opened in 1979, so I visited the JFK to speak with their current curator about “To The Brink,” the current exhibit on the Cuban missile crisis. After a pleasant hour of conversation, I asked how I could access information about past exhibits—plans, photos, panels, text blocks, or press releases. The curator paused briefly before admitting that the JFK didn’t have a collection devoted to its own exhibit materials.

Credit Transparency and the “Collaborator’s Bill of Rights”

Digital projects often not only encourage but require collaboration. And this collaboration is not only between scholars from different areas of expertise but often involves graduate students, web designers, programmers, archival consultants, and library staff (just to name a few). This often distinguishes digital humanities projects as a form of scholarly publication from traditional humanities scholarship (i.e. Articles, Monographs, Edited Volumes). But the single or co-authored publication does not offer an ideal model for crediting the roles and contributions of each of the individuals involved in a digital project. Even the model of crediting contributions to an edited volume, where each author is attributed credit to their individual or co-authored contributions, does not serve as an effective model because each contributor is essentially contributing the same thing: an article or chapter to be included in the volume. Due to the diverse roles contributors play in a digital project, these projects must establish a fair and equitable attribution of credit to each contributor according to the role they fulfilled.

The Grammar Guru Presents: historic(al)

Have you ever noticed that some things are historic while others are historical?  As lovers, writers, and doers of history, we often use the two words interchangeably and, as a result, incorrectly.

Historic refers to something monumental.  November 4, 2008 was a historic day in America; the nation elected its first African American president.

Historical, on the other hand, refers to anything that, in the words of the CMS, “pertains to or occurred in history.”

And there you have it. Happy history writing!

Confronting Guantanamo

It’s Official: Our installation of the Guantanamo Public Memory Project Traveling Exhibit will bear the title Confronting Guantanamo. With this title we seek to make an emotional and intellectual appeal. This exhibit will be about both locating Guantanamo in time and space, and questioning its social and political legacies. The exhibit provides historical, cultural and geospatial context, confronting each of us with questions about the nature of place, the reality of the refugee experience, the meaning of public health, and the scope of justice.

Our most recent meeting focused on determining this title, finalizing the three themes we will emphasize ( 1. what it means to be a refugee, 2. public health and healthcare at Guantanamo, and 3. Guantanamo as both a space and a place), getting the ball rolling with graphics for our branding and advertising, continuing work on plans and logistics for the installation itself, and making decisions about which speakers and programs to pursue. All we can tell you right now is the title and the dates: March 19th–April 24th.

Keep track of the approaching opening via the countdown on the right side of our page, and check back here for updates on this exciting process!

Visit www.confrontingguantanamo.com to learn more.

The GPMP Exhibit Planning Committee Brainstorms Exhibit Titles

Native Voices in Museum Spaces

Mens Grass Dance, Plains Indians Museum Powwow

Once upon a time, I interned and worked as a tour guide at the Center of the West, an institution that combines five museums under one roof, including the Plains Indian Museum (PIM). Since then, I’ve observed that the Plains Indian Museum is part of an encouraging trend: museums dealing with Native American history and culture are increasingly run, curated, or contributed to by tribal members. This is often manifested in three distinct and important improvements to the ways in which museums approach Native American history and culture.

Jillian’s recent post on Project 562 brings up two of the three improvements. The first is that stories are told by native people, not about them. The second, which does not apply to Jillian’s blog, is that objects and collections are being displayed in ways appropriate to their uses rather than as context-free works of art or anthropological curiosities. The third, which is key to the project and which lies at the heart of Jillian’s disappointment with so many New England museums, is that Native cultures can and should be defined by both their history AND their contemporary lives.

“Project 562”

Recently, while scrolling through my Facebook feed, I stumbled upon an article for an intriguing exhibit: photographer Matika Wilbur’s Project 562.  Developed with the goal of photographing members of all 562 federally recognized indigenous tribes in the United States, the Project grew into a multimedia installation representing the “complex variety of contemporary Native America.” The number of federally recognized tribes has grown along with the project, and Project 562 now comprises 566 indigenous nations. Forty of these portraits are now on display at the Tacoma Art Museum, accompanied by oral history interviews with the portraits’ subjects.

Required Summer Reading: The Entire Contents of the Digital Humanities Quarterly

The Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ) is an open-access, peer-reviewed, online journal managed by editor-in-chief and professor Julia Flanders at Northeastern University. Through a collaboration of editors from institutions across the globe, the DHQ publishes scholarly articles, editorials, book or media reviews, and much more. Its mission is to make a wide-range of materials produced in the digital humanities openly accessible online. As a public history student with a special interest in seeing texts and objects preserved digitally, I approached Prof. Flanders about an introduction to the digital humanities in January 2014. By the summer, I found myself working on an enlightening research project that got me thinking about the relationship between public history and the digital humanities.

The Grammar Guru Presents: To lay or to lie?

To lay or to lie?

When we speak, we frequently misuse lay and lie.  It stands to reason that we would also misuse them when we write.  In my opinion (and just about everyone else’s) these are the two most difficult irregular verbs.

Lay means to put something down.  Because lay is a transitive verb, a direct object (the thing that receives the action of the verb) will come after it.

Jordana lays the merchandise on her bed.

Lie means to rest or recline.  Lie is an intransitive verb, so no direct objective follows it.

After an exhausting shopping spree, Jordana needed to lie on her bed.