Tag: Digital Humanities

The Digital Present and Future of the Past: Digital History at the 2018 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting

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By Joel Zapata

The 2018 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting in Sacramento, California (April 12-14) featured seventeen digital history sessions and workshops. Within the sessions that I had the opportunity to attend, critical questions for history practitioners—elementary school teachers, graduate students, university professors, archivists, museum professionals, and more—abounded. What does it mean to be a twenty-first century historian? In producing historic knowledge, who is excluded and what communities are included? How do we take history beyond paywalls and costly books that exclude the vast majority? How can educators reach native digital students? How can scholars blend traditional print medias and digital medias to reach broader audiences but still fulfill academia’s print-based publication requirements? How can we present complex ideas clearly to the widest audience possible? Undoubtedly, the ways we answer these questions will determine the future of the past.

And if the future of history is digital, the sessions I attended made clear that history’s future is also collaborative. One thought-provoking session, titled “Teaching Contested History: Digital Archives and Digital Maps,” was composed of librarians, professors, archivists, and a public-school official. The panelists described the collection and digitization of primary sources regarding the court-ordered integration of Boston Public Schools in various mediums, including Beyond Busing: Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources. In the citywide effort, educators, archivists, and activists created an approachable primary-source-based curriculum focused on teaching historical and civil literacy to Boston public school students by documenting the city’s profound racial strives. The panelists concluded that the endeavor countered fake history—or “the liberal myth”—that minimized Boston’s divisive and yet to be completed school desegregation process, brought social and social justice awareness, demonstrated the hard truths of history at grade level, and taught students how the past informs society’s present state. Hence, the panelists demonstrated how digital collaboration can result in achieving the highest aspirations within the practice of history.

https://educatingharlem.cdrs.columbia.edu/omeka/

Another forward-looking session, “Writing Race, Gender, and Education: Digital Book and Video Projects,” showcased work by professors and students, which included a discussion over Educating Harlem. This project, out of Teachers College, Columbia University, is a multiyear and multifaceted collaboration between students and professors regarding Harlem’s educational history from the Harlem Renaissance through the twentieth century. The project’s creators intended it to become a digital platform that contains a curated archival collection and exhibits, an edited scholarly volume, as well as an after-school program for Harlem high school students to learn the educational history of their community. With these different outlets, the creators of Digital Harlem hope to connect the historically oppositional white university to its surrounding African American community, attempting to work with the community instead of against it.
The session also featured a presentation by Jack Dougherty (Trinity College) on open access scholarly books, of which he has published two and is writing another, On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs, in collaboration with fellow professors and students. This web-first book, under contract with Amherst College Press, “makes visible the hidden [school] boundaries that divide the Hartford region, and tells the stories of civil rights struggles to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines.” As Dougherty demonstrated, the book’s narrative is enhanced through interactive maps, documents, and video—an impossibility within traditional books. Moreover, Dougherty and his collaborators are writing On The Line openly online, allowing for readers to explore and comment before completion. The book’s development demonstrates how editing can go beyond the closed editing of conventional books while remaining part of a university press. Perhaps most promisingly, On The Line is an example of accessible and easily discoverable scholarship that is not hidden behind paywalls. From this session, I left with a sense that open-access (i.e., freely available) digital books are a meaningful way of democratizing history, opening the past to the wider public, students, and scholars. Such a publication medium may be especially attractive for civil rights historians, providing another avenue to connect with and include the people they write about. The session chair and commentator, James Fraser (New York University), rightfully concluded that the panelists were “part of what we all need to become” if history is to remain—or become more—relevant in the twenty-first century.

Digital history is a broad field that encompasses distant reading or textual analysis, the digitization of documents or artifacts and related metadata, data manipulation, mapping methodologies, digital publishing, and more. The sessions I attended did not focus on all the possible ways of doing digital history. Yet, they all centered on one of the most significant outcomes of digital history—provoking empathy from an audience through the growing ways of doing history. That is, digital history can provide us additional avenues of humanizing the past. The sessions I attended also focused on growing the audiences that historians and other history professionals reach. Overall, at 2018 OAH Annual Meeting, presenters along with audience members reimagined how history can grow within an increasingly connected digital world.

Recap of the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting: The Historian’s Perspective

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Andrew Klumpp is a Ph.D. Student in American religious history in the Graduate Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University.

The American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting is a somewhat unique conference experience for historians. One of the most exciting elements about attending AAR, which took place in Boston this year, is the interdisciplinarity that’s there. In my conference-going professional life, I rarely hobnob with Jewish ethicists, biblical exegetes, or anthropologists interested in Taiwanese Buddhism. I get to do that at AAR. Chatting with such diverse folks can be both fruitful and at times, a challenge.

I am a U.S. historian interested in religion. I work in archives, study the past, and employ historical methods in my work. And, there’s a place for me at AAR. In fact, there is a cadre of historians running around the conference, if you know where to look—people ranging from enthusiastic grad students like me to established figures like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

As I write this blog sitting on a return flight somewhere over the square states where I grew up, two sessions in particular continue to linger.

One of the thorniest issues in American religious history these days has got to be grappling with the definition of the term “evangelical.” I showed up to a paper session on evangelicalism to see how religious studies scholars grappled with these definitions. I left disappointed. Two of the five papers used the term somewhat precisely; the other three tended to collapse evangelicalism broadly construed, white evangelicalism, and conservative evangelicalism into one category. In light of work like David Swartz The Moral Minority and scholarship on black and Asian evangelicals, I longed for more clarity. I also wondered if struggles with defining evangelicalism might be particularly acute among historians since we so clearly see that the evangelicalism of George Whitefield or Sarah Osborn was radically different than the evangelicalism of Franklin Graham and Paula White.

Andrew Klumpp with colleagues at the AAR, 2017

Before catching my plane to Dallas, I ducked into one final panel. I’m so glad I did! The Mormon Studies Unit hosted an author-meets-critic session about Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s most recent book A House Full of Females—one of the finest books I’ve read in the past six months. Ulrich received widespread praise from the panelists as well as engaging queries. Her kindness, graciousness, and insight provided a master class for how to engage in charitable and generative historical dialogue. In summing up some final thoughts, Ulrich reminded those of us in attendance of her abiding belief that what we do day by day really matters, and that if we believe that the everyday holds significance and power, it should show up how we interpret the past. These wise words from one of my favorite historians were certainly worth a slightly hurried trip to the airport.

This year’s conference also marked the first time that I presented my own work at a discipline-wide national conference. While the audience was larger than previous presentations I’ve given at smaller conferences, the geniality of the group and its response provided a great opportunity to hone my scholarship and gain invaluable feedback. My panel focused on how beliefs influenced civic engagement among Christians. Of the four papers on my panel, mine was decidedly the most historical, drawing on archival research and full of the travails of rural immigrants building new communities in the American Midwest in the nineteenth century.

I received valuable feedback on some of these initial thoughts for my dissertation, yet one of the most valuable lessons I learned from the process involved owning my space and identity as a historian. A few of the other panelists employed more theological or anthropological methods, but I stuck to my historical approach and was able to articulate how my work as a historian contributed to conversations even among those who utilized other approaches. I am thoroughly convinced historians have valuable contributions to make to interdisciplinary work, and I’m grateful not only for the chance to present my work but also for the continued opportunity represent historians and historical methods in these conversations.

Of course, in addition to excellent sessions, the conference also offered fruitful opportunities for networking and mentorship. Evening receptions led to engaging conversations with old friends and new colleagues. AAR also provided multiple graduate student mentoring opportunities. A luncheon connected small groups of graduate students with faculty mentors who answered questions about the job market, the challenges of graduate school, and career diversity. I also took advantage of AAR’s one-on-one mentoring program. This led to a rich conversation with an established professor and American religious historian who also happens to be a first-generation college student. Over a cup of coffee, we chatted about pedagogy, historical scholarship, graduate school, and our experiences as the first in our families to attend college.

After two days of rain, on a brisk 32-degree Monday morning, I ventured into Boston. I made my way to Boston Common, past many of the old meeting houses, and several other quintessential Boston landmarks. For the past semester, I was a teaching assistant for Kate Carté Engel’s Doing Digital History: Mapping the Great Awakening course. With our students, we’ve mapped sites throughout much of Boston. As an added conference bonus, I got to look at some of this landmarks with new eyes, thinking spatially about the history that surrounded me.

As my flight begins its final descent into Dallas, a number of questions continue to linger after this most recent conference. I continue to nurture my voice as a historian in interdisciplinary conversations and am grateful for both the intellectual stimulation and sage advice I discovered in Boston this weekend. What is more, the whole experience makes me even more eager for AHA in January when I get to do it all over again.

Terry: SMU’s Once Great White Hope

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Roberto Andrade is a PhD Candidate in SMU’s William P. Clements Department of History

My dissertation examines boxing’s influence on identity, specifically focused on Mexican and Mexican Americans. Concerns over machismo, class, and assimilation inform many of the arguments that use boxing—as well as other sports—as a claim towards authentic “Mexicanness.” In the United States, an equivalent to boxing’s impact on identity is the Great White Hope; a common trope deeply rooted in race that seemingly never fall out of use. In 1972, for one boxing bout, the Great White Hope came from SMU when a student, Terry Daniels, fought for the boxing heavyweight championship. While I was conducting research, Joan Gosnell, an archivist at SMU, mentioned Terry Daniels. As boxers rarely come from affluence, his story immediately intrigued me. After further research, I found a remarkable story that, unfortunately, has an ending that is common for boxing. This is that story.

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The first time Joe Frazier knocked down Terry Daniels, it appeared he would not get back up. Daniels laid there, face down and motionless, for about five seconds. It was the type of knockdown that forces spectators to wonder if they witnessed a man’s death. After eight seconds, Daniels struggled to his feet, just as the first round ended. And as the bell rang, signaling a minute’s rest between rounds, Daniels stood there, confused, staring at the referee. Daniels’s trainer walked across the ring and placing his arm on his fighter’s shoulder, guided him back to their corner to prepare for the second round.

Terry Daniel son knocked down while Joe Frazier waits in the background. (Branson Wright, The Plain Dealer).

That Frazier knocked down Daniels was unsurprising. Ten months earlier, Frazier became the first boxer to defeat Muhammad Ali. Frazier is among the all-time great boxers; Daniels is not. But on a Saturday night in 1972 New Orleans, a day before the city hosted the sixth Super Bowl, Daniels, the latest version of the Great White Hope, challenged for boxing’s heavyweight championship.

Daniels’s manager, Doug Lord, was largely responsible for the fight. “I told the fight promoters I’ve got a white kid from Dallas,” Lord said. “He’s friends with the Dallas Cowboys, and everyone knows the Cowboys are going to the Super Bowl in New Orleans…They loved it. They bought it.”[1]

Technically, Daniels was not from Dallas; he only lived there, moving from Ohio to attend Southern Methodist University. The son of a successful, possibly millionaire, businessman, Daniels was intelligent, young, handsome, and—since it is a prerequisite of any Great White Hope—white. Leading up to the fight, promoters emphasized the many differences between Daniels and his opponent. Stories of him being part of his high school choir, or mentioning that Daniels was treasurer of his junior class became part of the narrative. In the hype, even noting Daniels enjoyed reading was worth mention as was his initial plans to study engineering upon first enrolling at SMU.[2] All these things distinguished Daniels from Frazier, who though lived in Philadelphia was originally from South Carolina. Frazier was a sharecropper’s son—far removed from Daniels’s life of privilege. But as it pertained to boxing, these differences mattered little once promoters sold the fight. And those who bought tickets to see a Great White Hope, were on the verge of watching him lose minutes into the fight.

As the second round began the television commentators wondered aloud if Daniels had recuperated from Frazier’s punches. They noted the obvious—that Frazier had won the first round—when seemingly out of nowhere, Daniels connected with a right uppercut that stunned Frazier. “Oh! He landed a beautiful uppercut,” one commentator incredulously screamed. Maybe Daniels was more than just hype. Maybe he was something almost as romanticized as a Great White Hope; maybe Daniels was a natural.

Daniels was certainly athletic, having played football and baseball for SMU before an injury shifted his focus to boxing.[3] As an amateur, Daniels found success even winning local Golden Glove tournaments. When he fought professionally not only did he postpone his graduating from SMU but also angered his father who, understandably, had not sent his oldest son to Dallas to prizefight. By 1972, three years into his career, Daniels had become a local celebrity, accumulating a record of 28 wins, 4 losses, and 1 draw; an impressive accomplishment even if against subpar competition. But as his punch connected and forced Frazier to step back, no one cared about past opposition—not when, for one punch, it appeared Daniels may have been on the verge of orchestrating an incredible upset.

In boxing, hopes die fast. Within a three-minute round, hopes of a championship, of wealth and fame, and even, of any future quality of life can disappear. In the third round, Frazier brought Daniels back to reality—again dominating as he had in the first round. Frazier’s signature punch, the left hook, kept connecting and Daniels could do nothing to stop it. Had he raised his right hand slightly to better protect his face, it would have altered, even minimized, his right cross—his most effective punch.[4] And had he used a right hook, a punch he was not prone to using, to counter Frazier, he would have risked everything; as one of boxing’s old adages warned: you don’t hook with a hooker. Frazier was a hooker—the left-handed, boxing type—Daniels was not. So again, Frazier’s left hook dropped Daniels toward the end of round three. He stood up long enough to fall by the same punch not even ten seconds later. As he gasped for air, a look of bemusement on Daniels’s face, the bell rang and once again saved him.

On the final knockdown, Frazier nearly knocked Daniels out of the ring. (Branson Wright, The Plain Dealer).

There was nothing remarkable about the fourth round besides Frazier knocking down Daniels a fourth and fifth time. The latter resulted in Daniels falling back through the ropes, appearing as if he would fall all the way to the floor. Ringside judges braced to break Daniels’s fall but he remained inside the ring and at least, save some dignity. The referee stopped the fight, leaving Daniels visibly upset. “Don’t stop, damn it,” Daniels screamed, before turning to his manager and saying, “Doug, don’t let them stop it. There’s nothing wrong.”[5] Daniels was likely the last person in the world to realize he never stood a chance.

After the fight, Daniels’s manager implored, even begged him, to not fight again.[6] For a time, Daniels took the advice, returned to SMU and earned a political science degree in December of the same year he fought for boxing’s heavyweight title—one of sport’s most prestigious titles. But the title of boxing heavyweight champion can have a seductive appeal on men practicing a sport so inherently tied into ideas of masculinity. “The closer a heavyweight comes to the championship,” Norman Mailer noted, “the more natural it is for him to be a little bit insane. [S]ecretly insane, for the heavyweight champion of the world is either the toughest man in the world or he is not.”[7]

Whether he deserved it or not, the fight gave Daniels a chance to show he was the toughest man in the world. He failed. And whether he was a Great White Hope or not, the loss hurt the same. Six years after fighting Frazier and claiming he had retired, Daniels fought on, partly because dreams of his title fight haunted him. “I daydream a lot about that fight,” Daniels explained. “I fantasize about what might have been if I had blasted Frazier in the third round, when he was so confident, with a right hook.”[8]

Daniels fought until 1981. Counting his loss to Frazier, Daniels’s final 32 fights resulted in only 7 victories against 26 losses. Terry Daniels left Dallas and returned to Ohio in 2004. He now lives in a retirement home, suffering from what some call pugilist Parkinson’s.[9]

 

[1] Peter Finney, “Former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier etched in N.O. boxing history,” The Times-Picayune, November 16, 2011.

[2] Jeff Miller, “The Fight of His Life,” Texas Monthly, February 2015.

[3] Ron Fimrite, “Back-To-School time for Terry Daniels,” Sports Illustrated, January 24, 1972.

[4] Les Thomas, “Student Boxer Believes Punching is his Bag,” The Campus Chat (Denton, Tex.), February 14, 1969.

[5] Don Gardner, “Re-evaluating the Situation,” The Daily Campus, January 25, 1972.

[6] Kevin Sherrington, “Fight of his life amounted to Super letdown,” Dallas Morning News, January 26, 2004.

[7] Allen Barra, “Norman Mailer, Sportswriter,” The Atlantic, December 26, 2013.

[8] Mike Kiley, “Daniels is boxing to keep wolves from his doorstep,” Chicago Tribune, October 26, 1978.

[9] Mark Podolski, “In “My Brother The Boxer,” brother and author Jeff Daniels chronicles pinnacle of Willoughby South grad Terry Daniels’ pro career, a bout with Joe Frazier,” The News-Herald, November 9, 2015.

 

Digitally Mapping and Exhibiting the Plains’ Chicana/o Movement

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Joel Zapata is a PhD Candidate in SMU’s William P. Clements Department of History

The Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement, or simply the Chicana/o Movement, has traditionally been documented as a regional liberation movement centered in South Texas, Northern New Mexico, the Denver metro area, and Southern California. Moreover, scholars have tended to focus their work on the Chicana/o Movement within major cities like Los Angeles and San Antonio. [1]  This is partly because the Chicana/o Movement was a decentralized patchwork of local movements, and partly because the history profession relies on archives and other source materials that institutions outside of progressive, urban areas do not often preserve. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot declared, “the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means of such production.”[2]

Thus, Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space, a digital history project, is meant as a step in revealing an understudied portion of the Chicana/o Movement: the way it unfolded on the Southern Plains. Ethnic Mexicans (people of Mexican descent regardless of nationality) in the largely rural region worked towards achieving social justice in their own communities through the Chicana/o Movement and larger Mexican American Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Through their activism, they made the plains a more hospitable home for Mexican people.

This digital history project takes scholarly research to the wider public. In other words, it is also a public history project. Keeping in mind the community origins and future of Chicana/o history, I initiated the project with the awareness “that Chicana/o history is for everyone (not just historians) and that the investigation of the past can be the engine driving today’s activist passions.”[3]  In my work outside the university setting, my aim is to make history accessible to Mexican origin and Latina/o communities, who may in-turn use knowledge gained from historical research towards the betterment of their social positions—the foundational goal of Chicana/o history and the related field of Chicana/o Studies.[4]

Figure 1. “Interactive Timeline,” Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space

Constructed through Omeka and Neatline, this project is a platform through which both scholars and the wider public can find an Interactive Timeline and Map (Figure 1) along with a curated online collection of materials regarding the Southern Plains’ Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement. A home page introducing the Chicana/o Movement along with a page describing the Southern Plains function in a similar way, as the introductory panels of a museum exhibition, gradually moving visitors into the Interactive Timeline and Map—the heart of this digital history project—and the online collection. Therefore, the project provides an accessible, digital museum experience that has not emerged within the walls of the Southern Plains’ museums and related institutions.

Within the Interactive Timeline and Map, visitors can explore the seminal events that together make the Southern Plains’ portion of the Chicana/o Movement. Visitors can study the events by pointing and clicking on them within the digital map, clicking through the chronological list of the events on the right side of the page, or going through the timeline on the bottom of the page (Figure 2).

Figure 2. “Interactive Timeline and Map,” Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space

The timeline and map provide visitors several avenues of exploration. Ideally a visitor to the project will fully read through each event of the plains’ Chicana/o Movement, but the timeline and map also allow a person interested in a certain city, event, or a type of event (such as police shootings signified through red points), to concentrate on the items that concern her or him.

Figure 3. “Interactive Timeline,” Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space

One can even go down to city level or even neighborhood level geography (Figure 3). Moreover, when possible, event descriptions include images beneath the text.

Moving beyond the timeline and map, items featured throughout the website are available to view with individual item descriptions in the online collection. The final portion of the project is a Resourses page that leads to encyclopedia essays for various groups covered in the project. The Resources page also connects visitors to outside oral history, archival, and multimedia projects, such as the Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral Horal History Project. Ultimately, this digital history project is intended to draw visitors to further explore the Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement within and beyond the plains.

[1] Ernesto Chávez, My People First! “Mi Raza Primero!”: Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002); David Montejano, Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010); David Montejano, Sancho’s Journal: Exploring the Political Edge with the Brown Berets (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012); Armando Navarro, The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); Armando Navarro, Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); Armando Navarro, La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000).

[2] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), xix.

[3] Carlos Kevin Blanton, “Preface,” in A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History, ed. Carlos Kevin Blanton, vii-ix (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), ix.

[4] See Rodolfo F. Acuña, The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011); José Cuello, “Chicana/o History as a Social Movement,” in Voices of a New Chicana/o History, ed. by Refugio I. Rochín and Dennis N. Valdés (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 1-22.

Great start to the year!

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We had a wonderful presentation yesterday from Lindsay Chervinsky, a new fellow at the Center for Presidential History and a historian of early American politics.  She summarized her discussion here, for those who weren’t able to make it.  Her advice for students really resonated for scholars of all levels.  Here’s a taste:

The overwhelming consensus from everyone I consulted is that your web presence is supposed to enhance your scholarship, not replace or detract from it. So don’t blog at the expense of classwork, don’t build an enormous Twitter following and neglect your dissertation, and don’t get into Facebook arguments while forgetting to politely engage with your immediate colleagues. You get the idea. That being said, here is a condensed version of my talk.

We’ve got so many students working on issues that are not just historically important, but also relevant to discussions going on in the culture — political violence and Southern religion during the Civil War, to name just two.  I’m excited to see what we can come up with!

Becoming a historian in 2017

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What a moment to start a graduate career in history.  Anxiety about the decline of the humanities has come to be tempered by whiffs of hope that critical thinking about society is highly valued, not just by intellectuals but by Capitalists.  But even more important, as the United States has been overtaken by a violent contest over its own past, historians – and historical thinking – have become a part of mainstream discourse.  A recent graph created by the Southern Poverty Law Center has been shared widely across the internet, explaining in a snapshot something that Americans desperately need to understand: public monuments praising Confederate military heroes were produced many years after that war, not to memorialize the dead but rather to intimidate and terrorize those Americans whom the likes of Lee and Jackson committed treason to enslave.

Image from Southern Poverty Law Center

 

It’s a complex argument, but it’s been amazingly successful: Confederate monuments don’t represent the Confederacy, but the tyranny of the Jim Crow era and resistance to African Americans being included in full citizenship rights. Even the descendants of Stonewall Jackson have made the argument.

For the moment, and in the present context, I’m focused less on the civics lesson being made here than on the role of historians in the process, and the wider trend of historians using new media to build historical knowledge in the American public.  The SPLC graphic is a great example of the kind of visualizations being done by digital humanists.  The growth of graphical interpretations of history is one of the most exciting trends in the field.  It has allowed historians to present enormous amounts of careful research to a much wider public audience, encapsulating complexity and encouraging exploration of humanistic data.  The New York Times’s Upshot series bends towards the social scientific, but its influence on public discussion has included more than a little history as well.  Then there are the many ways that this argument has been disseminated.  The Washington Post has a new series that presents historical arguments.  Scholars like Kevin Kruse and Joanne Freeman have leveraged Twitter to build followings.  Group blogs, like Religion and American History and the Junto, get thousands of hits, and they use their platforms to speak to issues that are topical and historical.  Podcasts, like Ben Franklin’s World, bring scholarship to a public that might be scared off by a book full of footnotes, but is more than willing to hear the complex insights contained within.

The current generation of history graduate students has an opportunity, and a challenge, to think through what these various mediums mean for the discipline.  What kinds of arguments are best suited to what venue?  How can we best help inform public discussions about issues that cry out for historical framing?  How can we bring what we study – the arcane questions that animate us – to the public arena at the right moment?