Hello! I'm Doctor Tom Lee and I'll be doing
a number of the lectures in this 2020 US History Since
1877 course. The purpose of
this segment which will appear in the introduction
to your course is really to introduce history itself
and to ask what history is,
after all, so that hopefully you'll have a better sense of
what you'll be getting out of taking a course like History 2020
through OpenBUCS or wherever you might take it. There was a study
conducted by some scholars back in the 1990's
and they asked a large pool of Americans
sort of how they related to history
and interestingly enough different americans
relate to this idea of history in different ways.
They get their history in different forms and
who they are often determines
what they think about those various forms and how accurate they are.
A lot of times when you ask people
what is history, or at least it's been my experience, what you get is an answer
something like, well
history is everything that ever happened or history is the past,
but there's a problem with that.
It's a far different sort of definition than certainly what the
professional practitioners of the discipline of history would think of as
history.
The problem with thinking of history as everything that happened or just the facts
or
the past, is that that's a sort of flat earth
model. Every event is
equally important and
the value of every event is the same. That's
not what really history is at least not the
discipline and that's what I'm talking about here. Sometimes
it's the the case that people
confuse history and what we in the profession refer to as memory.
History is not memory. We all have memories. We have individual memories and
as a society,
as a nation, and as human beings we sort of have a collective memory.
We remember events and like historians we as individuals often
imbue those events with value. So, for instance,
you might remember a particular birthday
as being important and you have a very clear memory
so you tend to think of it or value it more highly
than you might another event like... one particular Tuesday you went to school
and nothing happened. You get
a little closer to history when you start thinking about memory
because memory is about value. It's about creating meaning.
Ultimately that's what historians are after not...
it's not about memorization, it's not just the past,
it's not just what happened, history has to do with the creation of meaning.
The problem with memory, very quickly,
is... well, it's the problem with individual memory isn't it?
Often we create false memories. We have the capacity as human beings
to remember things that never actually happened or in
ways that never actually happened. Most of us
for instance remember, at least certainly here in the United States remember
the events of September the 11th 2001
when planes brought down the World Trade Center Twin Towers,
but each of us was in a different place.
We saw it from different angles and different perspectives,
and that's sort of what I was getting at earlier with the
survey that was done that found for instance that
many people get their ideas about history from
Hollywood. But it's worth noting
that certain groups in the United States have tended to see Hollywood's version
of history as positive
while other groups have tended to see their representation
and thus the entire story presented by Hollywood
as very problematic. A good example would be
a traditional Western in which
certain people are portrayed as the good guys, they wear the white hats,
while other groups are portrayed in ways that are somewhat negative.
It makes sense. Just as we all looked at 9-11 differently.
We were in different places. I remember I was in the middle of a lecture
and I didn't know about the planes hitting the towers until I finished the
lecture and walked out in the hallway
and I didn't have at that point access to TV so I got my news from the internet.
That shaped the way I looked at that event.
My memory is bound up with
how I understood that event, and
the fact that I thought that event was important, that I remember that day and
we as a society I think, remember that day.
So the question is,
if history is not just the past, and if history is
distinct from memory, which in many ways
can be flawed, can be changed, can be transmuted over time,
then what is it that sets history apart,
as a discipline, more than a profession, as a discipline, as something you do,
a process? And the answer probably goes back all the way to the 19th Century.
I'm skipping over a lot here but
if we go back to the 19th Century when professional history began,
there were a number of ideas, really three big ones tied up with what history
was to become. The first was the idea that the past,
no matter how hard we try, is insurmountably distinct and
different from the present.
We can never go back and render again
the truth, history as it really was. We can try and we
owe it to the past to try and be as accurate as we can
but that's done with the knowledge that we can never go back and even if we
could
think about it, even if we could go back to the day Abraham Lincoln was shot, we
would all be looking from different perspectives even then.
But there's another side to this which is as human beings we do have the
capacity for empathy.
That's to say that while I didn't experience the past or
why I may not be able to experience life in someone else's shoes as they've lived
it,
I can't know what's in their heart of their mind,
as a human being I ought to be able to have
a sufficient sense of
what it means to be human, to be able to see the world at least somewhat from
their vantage point.
That's one of the great gifts of history. It allows you, kind of like literature,
for a moment to step out
of your own position in the world and think about that large kind of glorious
globe
from a different perspective. But the third element is about process.
To be a historian is in many ways to familiarize yourself
with the evidence,
the documents, the letters, the photographs,
increasingly it will be email and digital images,
the audio recordings, the archaeology,
whatever it may be that has to do with the problem you're trying to solve,
that
riddle you're trying to unwind about the past.
It's evidence that the historian has to keep coming back to.
It's evidence that calls memory to question.
It's not enough just... it's not enough for a historian to simply say
well that's how I think it was, certainly that's how it's remembered,
might as well be mythology.
Ultimately, the historian must take the meaningfulness of memory
and compar it to what the sources
say. In this course,
ultimately what you're being asked to do is not merely familiarize yourself with
the facts, the names, the people, the events,
the dates, but to take those facts
and do what a historian does. Take the evidence
and try and find a meaning in the past
that for many people has an important
ability to shape how we think about the world now.
I hope you get a great deal from the course.
It's put together to try to ensure that you have the best experience we can
arrange.
Ultimately what I hope at the end is that you have a better understanding
of what it means to be a historian, to be an American,
and to be a human being. Thank you!