Thread by @monicalmercado

I started my new class, #HIST199 (the History Workshop required for majors and minors) with Jim Gardner and Sarah Henry's 2002 article in TPH (@ncph), "September 11 & the Mourning After: Reflections on Collecting and Interpreting the History of Tragedy." It's such a great piece.

Gardner and Henry write so eloquently, about the role of the historian -- collecting, preserving, and interpreting; making choices; seeking out collaboration. jstor.org/stable/10.1525… @ncph #HIST199 #museums #publichistory

But they also are frank about what historians aren't--they can't see the future; they sometimes have trouble dealing w/emotion; they aren't making memorials. My students learned about context: what it meant that Gardner & Henry were writing within the first year after. #HIST199

Giving students a moment in time to apply all these ideas about being a historian was so helpful ("what is history" & why does it matter are big Qs for 18 year olds the first week of classes!) And it let me be upfront with my own intellectual biography, so to speak. #HIST199

I later told my students that working alongside these historians was my first "history job." That the way we were going to think about the craft of history in #HIST199 always includes #publichistory.

[I didn't talk about what I saw and heard in our collections travels during the fall of 2001; it's still a lot to process.] I told my students that historians land in many places, but perhaps we could work out some shared values. #hist199

So we spent the rest of the week putting Gardner and Henry, the historians in the museum, in conversation with other ideas: the beautifully written introduction to the @AmericanYawp, and the @AHAhistorians tuning project document from 2016 (historians.org/teaching-and-l…). #HIST199

As I learned from @jnthnwwlsn's "History of Your Lifetime" exercise (bluebook.life/2018/08/21/my-…), even my youngest students, born in 2000, put #September11th on their lists. But of course, Gardner & Henry aren't just writing about the attacks on the WTC. #HIST199

Gardner & Henry were writing about the obligations of the historian, and a shared responsibility. I was nervous about starting a class with #September11th, and then I remembered how good this article is. I hope more folks are revisiting it. #hist199 #museums #publichistory

p.s. I don't ask students where they were (I've taught students whose parents died in the towers) but I appreciate @DanielTorday's new piece, on discussing #September11th with a new generation of students who were born after the event: theparisreview.org/blog/2018/09/1… #HIST199

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