To research the history of immigrants Erica Rand studies sexuality on Ellis Island, the gateway for many immigrants into the US. Rand studies sexuality, because the values about sex in our society influenced the history of immigration and immigrants. I think this is a very interesting approach, but in this blog I want to discuss […]
Subjects, Objects, Resistance – Feminism and Museums
“Feminism and Museums” – a complicated subject, I thought. So I did what most people do when facing something unknown – I googled it. The first entry was, however, not the comforting Wikipedia page I had hoped for, but a call for papers for an academic book about the subject – more people trying to […]
Internet as the new campfire to share stories around
More than twenty years ago I visited Ellis Island with the Dutch Museum Association. This visit made a huge impression on me, because it was the first time that I experienced oral history in such an intrusive manner. In the exhibition there were shots of interviews with survivors of the Holocaust. The orality […]
New Possibilities, Old Issues
“The Deep Dark Secret of oral history is that nobody spends much time listening to or watching recorded and collected interview document”– Michael Frisch With this quote, Michael Frisch captures the main issue of oral history; a problem which Steven High highlights in his article Public History. Telling Stories: A Reflection on Oral History and […]
Sine nobilitate: the lack of enthusiasm for historical games
Perhaps it is because of what I studied. It is hard, for most people, to find common ground in studying Latin syntax, or in trying to memorize names of ancient kings like ‘Suppiluliuma’. It can get a bit lonely at times, being an ancient historian. So imagine my excitement about meeting people who could relate […]
A day in the past?
Democratizing history by popular history Historians have positioned themselves as gatekeepers to the past in a world were more and more popular outings of history are being established. Popular media such as television would not be able to convey the complexity of history and the production and interpretation of history should therefore be controlled by […]
What is your story?
ORAL HISTORY GOES DIGITAL Oral history, although critiqued by some academics, is an unique way of enriching the history we know with exciting and compelling stories from people ‘who were there’, or at least from their parents or other family members who were there. Living in an era where digital environments are becoming the main […]
The world wide web as Lieu de Mémoire?
In 2006 Jeff Howe used the word ‘crowdsourcing’ for the first time in his article for the technology magazine WIRED entitled ‘the Rise of Crowdsurfing’. Ten years after Howe published his article, crowdsourcing has not only shown to be very useful, but also more and more common in our ever growing digital world. Through crowdsourcing projects such […]
Serious Sharing: Crowds to Count on
Crowdsourcing: what about it? Crowdsourcing nowadays is a popular, widely applied phenomenon. Popular examples are Wikipedia, 99designs, and Kickstarter. There is plenty of online discussion about the functionality of this tool, stemming from a variety of online forums. Here you can find an extensive overview of the various ways in which crowdsourcing is applied and different […]
The ‘guide on the side’ no one asked for
History is never unbiased and can become the centre of, sometimes, heated debate. Leslie Madsen-Brooks proves this point very clearly in her article ‘‘I nevertheless am a historian’: Digital Historical Practice and Malpractice around Black Confederate Soldiers’. The increase of digital tools for people to do their own research has made it possible for everyone […]