My Beautiful Wickedness

Remember the “historical marker” that I posted here the other day?

Two things:

1) It was a picture taken by the Phantom Scribbler. I’m flattered that you all liked it and that somebody forwarded it to the much-bigger Crooks and Liars site; she’s got a great eye for what people need to see and I’m happy to popularize her work. However, if she’s not attributed as the photographer, then her creative work isn’t being recognized and I look like a chump when her work is spread all over the Internet without the home source. I always attribute; please do the same if you pass the work along.

2) On a lighter note, you really should go check out this entire series of “On This Site Stood” signs. The artist, Norm Magnusson has created these signs as commentaries that speak to contemporary political and social issues that affect and interest ordinary people. They’re all good. Go take a look.

I am, by a fluke of cruel fate, going to be picking up my fifth class this semester on history pedagogy. (Yes, that’s two sections of US Survey to 1865, American Indian History, US Women’s History, and the teaching teachers to teach class.)
The heart of the class is a critical engagement with contemporary debates over how historical knowledge is created, transmitted, and in formal educational settings. The idea that pedagogical methods (not just content) have implications for the kind of social relations and civil society we are trying to model, the idea that a professor have been perceived as “cultural workers” whose practices are significant beyond the content matter that we’re conveying…that’s going to break like a ton of bricks on my students. I think they are pretty in touch with the idea of the racial and sexual politics of the US historical narrative and our historiography courses do talk at length about the changing purposes of history instruction.

Anyhow, I’m doing a section on public history and the creation of identity through narrative — what would our roadways and our society look like if, instead of every raid by Nathan Bedford Forrest, we commemorated other things? “On this site stood Emilia Burton, a freedwoman and mother of 9 living children, whose willingness to empty slop pots and make beds for 50 cents a day helped her family buy 21 acres which remain in the family to this day.”

Wouldn’t that be transformative?