Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

Natalie Bennett says that there's"a special circle of hell reserved for historians" who are placed there and

told that they have to write a national history, to be given to people who are becoming citizens of that state, that will tell them everything they need to know, and be acceptable to all interested parties. Every day they submit a new draft; every day it is thrown back to them. They beg instead to be given the task of pushing a bloody great rock up a hill, only to see it roll down again, just to get something easier and less frustrating to do.

Thanks to Jonathan Dresner for the tip.

The webpage for"Visualizing Cultures," a course jointly taught at MIT by linguist Shigeru Miyagawa and Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Dower, was taken down temporarily last week. Chinese students at MIT complained that the website displayed Japanese woodblock prints of beheadings in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 without any explanation of the historical context. Dower and Miyagawa have issued an apology and discussions are underway about how propaganda can be displayed without implying any endorsement of its offensive sentiments. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Update: See also, Doug Lederman,"Not So OpenCourseWare," Inside Higher Ed, 1 May.

Ahistoricality says that Caleb McDaniel's"The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons" at Mode for Caleb"deserves to be the most widely read post of the week."

Ahistoricality also sends along this note: Jon in Taiwan has just seen the film knock-off of the video game, Silent Hill. In it, there's a scene in which

the main character's husband (who's looking for her and their child) breaks into a small-town archives, finds the burnt boxes of the Silent Hill police records in plain sight, and discovers in seconds exactly the record that he seems to be looking for. (I say"seems" because I'm not even sure why he wanted to check out the police records in the first place.) As someone who has done research in several archives, I just have 5 words in response to the situation I've just described: Not. In. A. Million. Years.

John Kenneth Galbraith has died. New York Times obituary. See also: Brad DeLong, Henry Farrell, Greg Robinson, Margaret Soltan, and Mark Thoma.

Finally, farewell to Florence L. Mars of Philadelphia, Mississippi. There's a warm place in my heart for Southern white supporters of the civil rights movement, because – well – I was one of them. There wouldn't have been a more difficult place in the country for a white supporter of the movement than Philadelphia, Mississippi. David Chappell's Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement disappointed me because it featured people who were already well known. Local people -- I suspect disproportionately women (I'm thinking of people like Miss Mars and Montgomery's Juliette Morgan) -- often paid a very heavy price and go largely unremembered. Fortunately, Florence Mars left her own story in Witness in Philadelphia. So hail and farewell, Miss Mars. And, thank you. Thanks also to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.

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Robert KC Johnson - 5/1/2006

I quite agree.

And on the issue of context: I rarely use images in my classes, but frequently posts maps, documents, or tape clips on my website as assignments for students--it's the easiest and cheapest way of disseminating this type of material to the entire class. I expect to supply context for these items in class, once the students have completed the assignment. If faculty are required to supply "context" to items posted on the web, when would the line be drawn? For instance, next term I'm teaching a course in inter-American relations that features extensive (web) assignments from Congressional Globe debates about US policy toward the Caribbean Basin from 1840-1860. Southern senators frequently use vile racist rhetoric in debate, but nearly all have some untoward comments (if not about blacks, then about immigrants, or Hispanics, or Indians). If a web surfer somehow stumbled onto these documents, I can see where he/she might find them offensive.

Carried to its extreme (which I know isn't MIT's intention), the police would make it unduly burdensome for most faculty in a field like History to put class material on the web.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/30/2006

It doesn't seem to be available at the moment: Alan Baumler's original post included links to several images, and they're not showing anymore.

Alan did post a follow-up, confirming my recollection that the site was well curated and contextualized and looking at some of the Chinese-language discussions.

Even Google image includes a standard option to view an image in context, and it would be grossly irresponsible for anyone to protest without doing that (and the primary protest seems to have been from MIT students, who should know better), and without that, the number of people who would understand the image and be influenced or offended by it is very small.

There's no way to use the web for these kinds of resources without the potential for material to separate from its context: it's just one of the hazards of the medium that we're going to have to deal with like adults.

Oscar Chamberlain - 4/30/2006

Do you know if it had been possible to bypass the course portal and get to the visuals directly?

If people had to know it was from a course--because they had to go in through a course or university portal--then this is indeed disquieting. If, however, people could google their way to the visual without knowing it was in the context of a course, then I can understand, if not fully agree with, those who objected.

chris l pettit - 4/30/2006

We should all raise a glass to him tonight...what an economist.

One of the things I could never understand...he was criticised for writing in a manner that was "too simplistic" in that he wrote so the ordinary citizen (with a little education) could understand his ideas and they would not get stuck inside the ivory towers. They couldn't criticise his ideas or were being undermined by them...so they criticise him for speaking in a manner that regular folks could understand? Sad, really.

He recognised the effects that history and culture had on economics...and vice versa. He recognised the amount of power moral entrepreneurs had in manipulating society and the economic system...he recognised the perils and monstrosities of our greed based, profit first, accumulate as much stuff as possible society and actually generated ideas and policies to combat those vacuous ideals...

He is one of the greatest economic minds since Keynes...and we should be thankful we have men like Stiglitz, Sachs, and Weisbrodt following in his footsteps...

CP

Jonathan Dresner - 4/30/2006

That's more or less the same thing I said. There's a fascinating assumption that the mere presence of material constitutes some kind of influence on the world, even though nobody has any idea how that influence would be implemented....

Ralph E. Luker - 4/30/2006

I understand your being troubled by the case. There are all kinds of similar cases just waiting to happen. Any display of photographs of lynchings, for instance, that is not hedged about with disclaimors, forewarnings, and contextualizing material could blow up in a professor's face at any moment. In some ways, it seems to me preferable to display the visual material without contextualizing discussions. Creating such material might be a very useful exercise for students, but it's a bold professor who'd make the assignment without disclaimors and forewarnings.

Robert KC Johnson - 4/30/2006

This is a very strange and potentially troubling case. In a course on "visualizing cultures," examining Japanese portrayals of Chinese is obviously relevant. Unclear is why anyone would assume that simply because a class is studying a set of images, the professors or the university are endorsing the message of those images. MIT's explanation as to why the university temporarily took down the website doesn't seem to me very satisfactory.