Wooden Torso. Location: Club Church. Photo courtesy: Kevin Schram. Just a wooden torso you would think. Just carved wood, like any other sculpture bought in Bali in Indonesia, while riding on a scooter across the island, made of local wood. Yes, just that. But the object’s journey makes it just a little more than that. Jan, a […]
Author: Public History Student
Wanted! Information about warning signals in gay bars
For the ‘Queering the Collections’ project, two Public History students are looking for personal stories about warning signals used in gay bars in Amsterdam. We are specifically interested in the owl shaped lamps: when the eyes lit up, the visitors knew they had to ‘act straight’. Do you know this lamp or have you heared […]
Hello Sailor!: a real hope for mankind?
By Lisa Marie Kuiper ‘Given the right opportunity, we can generously embrace the whole diversity of human experience.’ With this positive statement in the back of her mind, dr. Jo Stanley co-curated the Hello Sailor! exhibit created by National Museums Liverpool in 2007. This lively exhibition, that turned out to be a great succes, was based […]
Complex narratives in the historic house?
By Lisa Willemaerts. Heterowhat? That was my first impression when I finished reading the article Sexuality in Heterotopia: time, space and love between women in the historic house. I found and still find the concept of heterotopia a bit confusing. I think Alison Oram tries to show how these historic houses encompass different narratives and […]
Out of the closet and into the museum
By Annabel de Ruijter – Cultural institutions often embody the public sphere, central sites where the display of sexual objects becomes a stage for debates over how and when the erotic is illicit. In “When the erotic becomes illicit. Struggles over displaying queer history at a mainstream museum”, Jill Austin et al. explore how the Chicago […]
Sex Sells
By Kevin Schram Sexuality in museums. A topic discussed in the last part of Mark Liddiards research essay ‘Changing Histories: Museums, Sexuality and the Future of the Past’ on the changes occurring in museums, concerning technologies and attitudes towards the past. He argues that questions should be asked about the identity and direction of museums […]
Age of Empires in the Classroom
By Ruben Messelink As a kid I spent hundreds of hours playing Age of Empires. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with my friends; competing with eachother during so called LAN-party’s. We bought a lot of chips and booze, brought or laptops and played from sunset till sunrise. The use of historical games as education The game introduced […]
Oral History: New Possibilities, Old Concerns
In the article ‘Telling Stories: A Reflection on Oral History and New Media’, oral historian Steven High explores some new technologies that have changed the methods of oral history (anno 2010). High argues, as does Michael Frisch, the authority with regard to oral history, that oral history is more than an interview and its transcription […]
Creating interest or context?
By Corine Bossink Who haven’t heard of them? Twitter accounts or Facebook pages who pretend to present ‘history’, posting ‘historical’ pictures, like @HistoryInPics. In February 2014 they had 1.02 million followers, which expanded to 2.62 million nowadays [1]. They even have a Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook page. In other words, they are amazingly popular. […]
A historical façade or historical experience?
“These accounts strip history of the truly fun parts: curiosity, detective work, and discovery” states the academician Rebecca Onion in ‘Snapshots of History’. Her plea focuses on the argument that widely popular Twitter accounts with historical pictures or photographs are bad for understanding history and therefore bad for people. They are failing to provide context […]