The readings this week mainly assisted in the development of using memory studies as a historical method and how memory can tie a number of historical fields into the same conversation. Memory and time are indelibly linked with the American public’s ability to understand the past. However, this ability changes fluidly, constantly being reinvented as the past moves further from present times.
In the words of Robert Weyeneth, “not being alive in a community at the time handicaps one’s eye for the traces” of the past.[1] This concept helps in thinking about my own historical method as, after reading these articles, I realized that my own interpretations have been shrouded in my historical ideals and what I deem important. In this way, my interpretation is affected by my own past experiences and historical interpretations that I place ahead of others. Although a variety of interpretations keeps historical studies fresh, memory studies reveal the frustrations that can come with remembering history incorrectly and demands that historians do not add to this problem (as some have done in the past). This anxiety was best described by Ken Yellis in his discussion of memory and museums. In his article, Yellis stated museums are helpful to the public “by opening unseen windows on cloaked realities,” but that they can also “retard” these realities.[2] It is dangerous, then, to place present-day interpretations on the past as they can distort history. Historians must always reveal as much objective truth as possible before formulating their own interpretations.
Seth Bruggeman introduced a thought-provoking concept to memory studies: the way that memory can be interpreted through gender constructs. According to Bruggeman, too often have “twentieth-century ideas about memory and preservation collided along gender lines.”[3] The idea of gender and memory is an interesting idea that can complicate my interpretation of the hand lines. It is interesting how I automatically assumed, even before reading the dossier that came with the lines, that they were used by men rather than women. Perhaps it is due to the presumed age of the fishing lines combined with American society prior to the late-twentieth century. If mostly used by men (John Coniver indeed was the lines’ initial owner), it could have represented a sense of male camaraderie and bonding that Coniver may have held dear. However, what did this mean for his wife? What could these fishing lines have represented for women? Did they connote any memories at all and, if so, were they good or bad memories? Placing gender into the story of the fishing lines introduces an entirely new interpretation (something I seem to be saying every week) and muddles the story even more, but in a positive way.
[1] Robert R. Weyeneth, “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past,” The Public Historian, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Fall 2005): 39.
[2] Ken Yellis, “Examining the Social Responsibility of Museums in a Changing World,” Artes Magazine (November 13, 2011): 10.
[3] Seth C. Bruggeman, “‘Save the Olympia!’: Veterans and the Preservation of Dewey’s Flagship in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia,” 15.
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