Afbeelding auteur

Roy Rosenzweig (1950–2007)

Auteur van The Presence of the Past

11+ Werken 595 Leden 5 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Roy Rosenzweig (1950-2007) was professor of history and founder of the Center for History and Mew Media at George Mason University. Author of several books, including The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (with David Thelen), and director of digital history projects, toon meer such as History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web and the September 11th Digital Archive, he received the Richard W. Lyman Award (presented by the National Humanities Center and the Rockefeller Foundation) for outstanding achievement in the use of information technology to advance scholarship and teaching in the humanities. toon minder

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Geboortedatum
1950-08-06
Overlijdensdatum
2007-10-11
Geslacht
male

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“Presenting the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life” answers the question, how do Americans outside of academia relate to history. In fact it sprang from a conversation at the 1989 annual meeting of the Indiana Humanities Council someone asked just that question. From that question sprang an in depth telephone survey and, eventually, this book. I first learned about this book from a list of required readings for a graduate program in public history and, although I cannot say that I found all the results surprising, I can see why it was on the list.

Americans do not expect the history presented in movies and television, even documentaries, to be accurate. People in the survey commented that as entertainment there was a need to compromise accuracy for dramatic effect. No surprise there. History taught in secondary school was despised as being boring and irrelevant, again no surprise, but history teachers, those who were willing to discuss topics outside the narrow presentations found in their textbooks, were rated much higher than the classes they taught, a distinction I did not expect to see.

The average American is experienced at “doing history”. That is they take experiences from the past, theirs, their families, and what they learn from sources they see as reliable, and integrate them into the decisions that they make. I doubt that the interviewees would identify the critical thinking they did in considering the past when making decisions as “doing history” it is the skill history majors sharpen in order to “do history”.

It has taken me almost two week to write this review. I kept wondering off on tangents about how this book explains the effectiveness of various museum exhibits I have seen. I honestly wish I was in a classroom setting and able to discuss this book with other public history wannabes. Which explains why this is on a graduate school reading list and why I enjoyed it so much. If you are at all curious about how others relate to the past you should read this book. If you are a humanities teacher, you need to read this, it explains what your students will consider relevant. There are no scholarly discussion of theories in it, just an honest look at how we Americans relate to our past. Roy Rosenweig was a great writer and editor and David Thelen only once, in his conclusion, had me concerned about his choice of multi syllable words. The book is worth indulging him that one weakness.
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TLCrawford | Apr 13, 2012 |
I had misgivings about starting to read Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public. I learned about the book from a reading list for graduate studies in public history. Scholarly essays are often less than enjoyable reading even if they are enlightening but that is not the case here, I found them to be both enjoyable and enlightening. The book was published in 1986 so the essays would be older than that and I have often been disappointed reading dated history. I was very pleasantly surprised. Only two of the eighteen articles were disappointments, most were actually fun to read. The editors selected essays to illustrate three different facets of public history, commercial uses of history, scholarly professionals in public history and political applications of history.

In the first section we get to learn about Howard Fast, author of historical fiction, the origins of American Heritage magazine, and movie director John Ford’s historical vision. The section on professionals gives us a look at the development of American history museums and the origins of historic preservation efforts such as Greenfield Village, Historic Williamsburg, and Indiana’s Conner Prairie. The third, political, section has very interesting on feminist history, GLBT history, and African-American history. The fact that their stories all ended in the 1980s seldom mattered although I had to wonder if American Heritage magazine was still being published. (It is.) The GLBT essay was in fact more interesting being twenty plus years out of date. By discussing the conditions up to the 1980s it vividly illustrated how quickly the world has been changing.

Presenting the Past offers several detailed looks at the history of American history. It also raises several interesting questions. One article looking at professional historians working for businesses and unions questions how unbiased these can be. After all, the article argues, they are dependent on the approval of the organizations for their livelihood and the historians self select their employers. The article is more wary of cooperate historians than of those working for unions however it never questions possible bias from feminist, GLBT, or African-American historians although the same factors apply. The historians self select the field they study and they depend on staying in the good graces of their employers and co-workers. A later article on African-American history does draw a distinction between scholarly and amateur historians, accusing the amateurs of narrowly focusing on heroes at the expense of analyses.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in history outside of the classroom. Roy Rosenzweig was also a founder of the on line Center for History in the New Media, a project in cooperation with George Mason University that promotes digital history. In addition to making history more widely available the website offers tools for research and to produce historical exhibits online. After Dr. Rosenzweig passed away the Center was renamed in his honor.
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Gemarkeerd
TLCrawford | Jan 30, 2012 |
Digital History is an introduction to the issues involved in creating an educational history website. Roy Rosenzweig and Daniel Cohen the authors and, respectively founder and director of research projects at the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) are the obvious people to write this guide. After showing just how new the New Media, the internet, is they show several examples of what can be done on the web. From national projects like the Library of Congress’s American Memory project to personal ones such as Jim Zwick’s Anti-Imperialism website and multi-national projects like the International Dunhaung Project we see the range of possibilities and learn that regardless of our resources we can create an interesting and popular site.

Once the range of possibilities on the internet has been established the book moves on to practical matters. Design, software, hardware, to hire or do-it-yourself are all discussed as is how to attract traffic to your site and how to gather data for sites like the September 11 Digital Archive and the United Kingdom’s Moving Here. The short history of copyright in the chapter Owning History is worth searching out on its own merits. The legal considerations involved in putting photographs, music and documents on the web are covered from an educator’s viewpoint with a warning that commercial sites will be held to different standards.

This is one of the finest practical histographies I have read and, from what I can see it is one of the most up to date. With a topic as fast changing as the internet that is no small accomplishment. The book seemed like a quick read. I say, “seemed”, because I have never seen the physical book and have no idea how long it really is. The entire book is available on line at CHNM, which is where I read it. The electronic version of the book is laid out in a way that struck me as ingenious. Every word of it is accessible on one page from inside a window. Each chapter is broken into sections and it all is accessible with little need to scroll down the page. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in doing web-based history.
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TLCrawford | Mar 24, 2011 |
 
Gemarkeerd
lateinnings | Jun 8, 2010 |

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Werken
11
Ook door
4
Leden
595
Populariteit
#42,223
Waardering
3.8
Besprekingen
5
ISBNs
23
Talen
1

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