Topic 2 Final Project: Memory vs. History

Topic Overview:

My topic investigated the process of what solidifies events, stories, and points of view as “history,” focusing on the below questions:

• How does this process inform what is learned and shared through the generations, through institutions, curriculum, and truth?
• How is information edited in a particular process or path before it is considered historical and worth spreading/teaching/learning?
• What are the criteria of history vs. memory?
• What is the power dynamic that allows this to happen?

My intended output/form for this project was to empower more stories, contexts, and perspectives to be shared to fully inform how certain events or movements impacted and shaped the experience for different communities as a societal whole rather than through a specific lens.

• Link to Presentation
• Link to Form

Research & Process: 

• Systems Maps: I chose to start my Daily Practice series by creating a Systems Map. This exercise identified the importance of documentation, how information is documented, and the most “successful” forms of documentation that are the lynchpin to a historical narrative’s viability.
• Daily Practice Day 2 & Daily Practice Days 3-6: Further brainstorming through the Daily Practice exercises led me to consider the different processes of creating a narrative, the revisions that take place, and how to frame a story in certain contexts.
• IAE Map: Helped me further solidify the Public and Counter Public through-line, framing the intention and vice versa.
• Janky Prototyping & Sketching: These creative ideation sessions gave me seedlings of outputs and interactions for interactive media outputs, but ultimately the idea of empowerment and being able to tell your own story was what I ultimately hinged the project form on, which is why I ultimately pivoted to the idea of a more accessible, low-res, guided journal experience, leading to the Make History Guided Journal.
• Further builds: Rather than seeing this journal produced by a company or a branded product, I could see this more as an initiative or outreach programming with a national institution with local branches to attempt to get a broad swath of inputs. Or, the potential to manage this at the local level through a grant or endowment for historical societies in specific areas of underrepresented populations, almost working as a community initiative similar to an idea of a time capsule, where local stories/entries. My only concern is with making this a publicized activity, the participants may choose to add color to how stories are told or written, which would impact their accuracy. That is something I haven’t fully understood, how to crack that part of the human condition to stretch the truth or have biases towards themselves to ensure the truth is told. The scale of which this is activated also determines the direction of its growth and intention, as mentioned in feedback from Marina.

Bibliography:

1. David W. Blight, April 2002, Historians and “Memory,” Common Place, <http://commonplace.online/article/historians-and-memory/#:~:text=owned%2C%20history%20interpreted.-,Memory%20is%20passed%20down%20through%20generations%3B%20history%20is%20revised.,contexts%20in%20all%20their%20complexity.>
2. Sofía García-Bullé, August 21, 2021, What is Historical Revisionism?, Institute for the Future of Education, <https://observatory.tec.mx/edu-news/historical-revisionism/#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20implies%2C%20historical,both%20positive%20and%20negative%20aspects.>
3. Victor Hugo Paltsits, 1911, Historical Societies: Their Work and Worth, Cornell University Press/JSTOR, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/42889984#metadata_info_tab_contents>
4. C. Behan McCullagh, 1987, The Truth of Historical Narratives, JSOTR, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2505043#metadata_info_tab_contents>
5. Julia C. Wells, 2022, Performing Invisible Stories Through Creative History, The University of California Press/The Public Historian, <https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/44/1/7/119621/Performing-Invisible-Stories-through-Creative>
6. Storyworth, <https://welcome.storyworth.com/questions?oid=37&affid=5source_id%3Dgoogle&sub1=Prospecting-Storyteller-11.20.20&sub1=Sitelink_OurQuestions&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Sitelink_OurQuestions&source_id=google&gclid=CjwKCAiAmuKbBhA2EiwAxQnt79pyFZP7aF4PCaBBVQ3cEayW7E3nahscuyepEJ5Ek0ZIPQKXFe1oGxoC8bcQAvD_BwE>
7. Think CBT, Think CBT Therapists, Worksheets & Exercises, <https://thinkcbt.com/think-cbt-worksheets>