What's History: Seeing It IRL

As I've mentioned, I'm currently on my research year, making a lot of short trips to different archives in order to look at materials (mostly old pieces of paper in various formats) that will inform my dissertation. Everyone's approach to research is different-- some people spend an entire year in one place at one archive; some projects are more heavily tied to a particular location than others. The process has inspired a great deal of reflection for me about the way that history is written-- no surprise there-- and about how to incorporate an appreciation of that complicated fact into classroom discussions of the discipline.

Types of sources are a common source of conversation and frustration in a history classroom. We can identify primary and secondary sources when they are clearly packaged (A Civil War letter! A recently published monograph!), but struggle to make the difference evident in more complex materials (A documentary created in the time period under study?). Reliability of sources is another point of challenge and is often dealt with by rigidly controlling the sources that students are allowed to use for a paper (only this book and the articles we've used in class, select two readings from this curated list, etcetera). So often we tell students to cite things not-the-internet simply because we're scared of letting it in with all of the confusion it presents. For a brief period, instructors could get away with saying that nothing on the Internet is a reliable source, but in the age of digital humanities such a proclamation is not just inaccurate but downright misleading. And when eventually these students choose individual topics on which to write research papers, they have no experience in choosing a good source. It is more difficult than we let on to explain the gentle nuances of why one thing is a good source for a history paper; another is not; another you can get away with, but only for certain projects. And then you go to a Very Nice Archive for your own research and find folders full of printed out emails and websites from the 1990s, and you chuckle quietly to yourself.

In short, there's a lot to be said about what can be done on the internet as far as research goes. But what I want to explore for a minute is the kind of things that can't-- the reasons why many travel to do historical research. This is not always a need that seems apparent to those outside of the discipline, a fact hammered home to me recently while staying at an Airbnb for research on the East Coast. I met several friends of the host, and as we sat around chatting over wine and the skeletal remains of dinner, I described my trajectory of travel-- Ohio to Buffalo to Northampton to Hartford to Boston to New York to Washington and then, who knew? I hadn't nailed down anything after that point. "But why do you have to go to all those places?" one asked. "This stuff isn't available online?"

From Vimeo. 

The conversation stuck with me-- both for the crystal-clear image of this scene in Hail Caesar! that it brought to my mind and as an instigator for a series of thoughts about explaining why, exactly, one might still need to go somewhere else to learn something about the past.

There's the obvious, of course-- there are a lot of things in the world that haven't been digitized, and if you're interested in writing about people who have not traditionally been favored subjects of historical study, sources about them are often the things that haven't been digitized. There's also a material culture element. As I've alluded to in talking about scrapbooks, some sources provide rich information that needs to be seen and touched in person. Many scrapbooks include greeting cards with manipulable or removable elements, letters which have to be unfolded or turned to read them in their entirety, or photos attached by tape on one side with a caption on the back-- all features which are difficult to make available in a digital format.

There's also a sense of obligation which informs the practice of traveling for research, based on the idea that it seems dishonest to write about a place without having been there. There's an idea that the "realness" of the place, the culture, will rub off on you a bit and will give you insight into the topic. I have to admit that this is not a super strong motivator for my own travels, as quite often the materials I am looking at are not necessarily local to the repository which holds them, and as its all US there's only so much you can argue about local cultures before it becomes a little too wildly specific (I'll defend to the death my argument that OKCians and Tulsans breathe entirely different air! My own south side of Wichita is so unlike the east or west sides as to constitute its own planet! Urbana? I don't know her). In fact, my research is more focused on tracing a common experience than it is on defining regional differences.

Perhaps more useful is a reason I didn't fully appreciate until recently-- a visit to a place can show you the way people remember its history. I visited Warm Springs, Georgia this month to look at that materials still held by the Roosevelt Warm Springs Vocational Rehabilitation Campus (previously the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, a leading treatment center for polio patients from the late 1920s to the 1960s). I was able to see the pools used for hydrotherapy and read a bit about the people who used them-- I even fully embraced the tourist experience and bought a bottle to fill with water from the famous Warm Springs. I walked around the still functional campus, which features pictures of former residents and a walking tour of notable buildings. Being there in person gave me an idea of the physical space occupied by people who have reflected on their experiences at Warm Springs in memoirs and periodicals. 

Although all of this is available for one to see and do at the Rehabilitation Campus, it is not the main historical attraction in town, and indeed I did not even discover that the walking tour was available until I arrived on the campus to check in. The average person passing through would be most likely to see Roosevelt's Little White House State Historic Site, which focuses heavily on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and presidency.

The Little White House. 

In addition to the Little White House itself, where FDR lived when he was in the area, and its associated guesthouse and servants' quarters, a small museum introduces visitors to the president and his time in the area. The exhibits there emphasize what role Warm Springs played in FDR's life and work, not just in terms of his physical rehabilitation and dedication to polio-related causes but also how rural life impacted his ideas about electrification and other New Deal programs. This is most dramatically demonstrated by the presence of a full-size electrical pole within the exhibit, with wires extending to a small replica cabin representative of that found in the area during his tenure in Warm Springs.

The pole, next to a wall reading "New Deal" and in front of one reading "Rural Electrification." 

The memory here of FDR the president is selective-- I found a single reference to Japanese-American internment, which appears on the timeline at the front of the museum and seems to be doing its best to make it appear to be an unrelated happenstance that occurred during Roosevelt's presidency rather than an executive order he personally signed.

The "World War II" section of the timeline with entry at top: "Japanese-American internment camps are created." 

More attention is paid to Roosevelt's experience of disability and the mobility aids he used. His adapted car appears in the center of the exhibit, and one of the last sights before you exit the building (onto a path with scooters available to ride to the Little White House itself) is a long row of display cases filled with the ornately carved canes that FDR received as gifts.

Roosevelt's last car at Warm Springs. 

The cane collection (and, naturally, my finger. Oops!)

So, this is a lot of travel talk-- how can we hope to make any of this useful in the classroom? Yes, I would love to send my students on trips around the country to see the current iterations of the ideas and people we've talked about in class (part of my impetus for starting this blog was, in fact, my desire to share things related to RTTP that I've seen while traveling with former students). 


Descriptions and photos of places can add modern relevance to a historical discussion. If you want to emphasize how history is made, an acknowledgment of travel for your own research can also be helpful-- how is the history we know and read shaped by the sources that happened to be available where the researcher was and the time they were there? For some topics, sharing photos of associated places can be useful-- when teaching the Four Freedoms in the US survey, I like to talk about the prominent role the Four Freedoms play in Washington D.C.'s FDR Memorial, and now I can supplement that with their appearance at the end of the Little White House Museum as well. 

The Four Freedoms wall at the Little White House Historical Site, including the Norman Rockwell prints of each.

Why did these words not only matter in the 1940s but also maintain staying power as part of the legacies of FDR and World War II? Why would curators choose to end this museum with this display (just before, of course, the gift shop)? What relationship do these words have with those of Executive Order 9066? Posing such questions can emphasize the continuing relevance of particular interpretations and sources to the neglect of others in public and local history.

But photos and stories can only be illustrative up to a point, and run the risk of feeling a little "look at my vacation slides." There are also more interactive ways to approximate the benefits of travel in the classroom. One option is to use local resources, like museums on campus with exhibits or objects related to the course. I was able to do this during Greenwich Village, 1913 last year when a professor teaching the game in another course set up a visit to the Krannert Art Museum to examine art from the period and suggested I come look at the same materials with my class. 

Another thing I like to do is encourage students to reflect on the landscapes they grew up in, have visited, or travel through daily. What echoes of the past surround them-- a street named after a local Klan member (or maybe a photographer)? A campus building named for a state governor friendly to late nineteenth century labor movements? How was the suburb they grew up in or the city they vacationed in over spring break shaped by economic boom and bust, struggles of race and class, or changing trends in transit, entertainment, tourism? Looking at the familiar in a newly thoughtful way brings benefits similar to those of traveling. 

Has travel changed the way you think about history or informed the way you teach? 

Related Links:

Would that it were so simple on Youtube.
If you like the Four Freedoms, you may also enjoy the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York City.
For more on FDR and Japanese-American internment, check out this collection of primary sources from the FDR library. (Note particularly the mention of "various special interests" that would welcome the removal of Japanese-Americans from their land in Document 4, a frequently overlooked factor in discussions of internment, and Document 7, the text of Executive Order 9066.) You may also enjoy the innovative monograph Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow. 

For a non-FDR perspective on Warm Springs, have a look at the incredibly readable memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven (available as an ebook with a Champaign Public Library card!)