History, Theory, and Methods of Making History

Making History

The Background:

We compose histories not only ​about m​edia but also t​hrough ​media. In other words, the way we imagine the past depends deeply on the forms—papers, films, hard drives, etchings, sculptures, architecture, oral stories, books, and other cultural artifacts—through which history is communicated. An important part of our job as media scholars is to examine how the physical affordances of media and our social institutions for preserving media inflect our view of the past.

This assignment will ask you to examine an archive containing historical documents. The goal of this work is to think about how histories are constructed through both physical materials and intellectual choices.

The Details:

This assignment will have 4 sections. You may write a single essay that includes all of these parts, or hand in a document split into four separate sections. Just make sure your work addresses all of the following:

1) The Object: ​(about 7 sentences)
Chose ​ONE ​well-known media ​object or text ​created before 1990.

• By “object” I mean a physical medium or mode of communication. Some interesting examples might include the telephone, liquid paper, closed captioning, the electric keyboard, crossword puzzles, smoke detectors, color television, traffic lights, speedometers, instant replay on TV, emergency broadcast signals, undersea telegraph cables, personal computers, the phonograph, etc.
• By “text” I mean a particular piece of media content that is generally considered to have historical significance: a particular news broadcast, revolutionary pamphlet, painting, photograph, etc.

In 7 sentences or less, describe the dominant contemporary view of how and why your object or text was made. According to the dominant narrative, who created it? What was its purpose or cultural role? What impact did it have on society? Which important people were involved in its creation? ​Cite at least two secondary sources​ that offer this dominant view (these may be scholarly articles, history books, news pieces, magazine articles, or other credible sources).

2) The Archive ​(200-300 words)
Visit one archive—physical or digital—that contains materials relevant to your object or text. Find two primary sources​ ​related to your topic. These sources should be from the same era as your object or text (i.e. before 1990). Write a brief description about the archive and collection in which you found these sources. Who created the archive and with what purpose? What sort of historical materials is the archive trying to preserve? What other sorts of historical documents does the collection contain? What sorts of materials seem to be missing?

3) Making History ​(600 -700 words)
How do the materials in this archive—particularly the two primary sources you’ve chosen—challenge or strengthen the dominant contemporary view outlined in section #1? Do they provide new voices? Do they fill in omissions from the dominant history? Do they challenge or deepen ideological assumptions about race, gender, class, or sexuality in the dominant history? What sort of other materials would this archive need to collect to give us a more accurate, fair, or ethical view of the history of your media text/object? Think critically about the assumptions that were made by those creating the archive and preserving these primary sources.

4) A Method to our Madness ​(600-700 words)
How could you use other methods from our class to study your historical text/object, deepening your critique of the dominant historical view? Create a plan for further research. Choose one method from our course (ideology critique of texts, intersectional analysis of texts, ethnography, surveys, interviews, etc.) and explain why it is a useful tools for investigating your topic further. Cite authors from our course where appropriate. Be as specific as possible about your methodological choices. What particular people or places will you study? What sorts of sampling methods or ethnographic approaches might you use? This is your chance to think deeply about how the methods we have explored might help challenge dominant ideas and free up new ways of understanding media. I encourage you to be ambitious.

Checklist for Submission:

1) “The Object” Approx. 7 sentences
2) “The Archive” 200-300 words

3) Links or images for both primary sources
4) “Making History” 600-700 words
5) “A Method to Our Madness” 600-700 words

6) A Works Cited page, including citations of your archival primary sources

Format:

Double-spaced, Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins. Include a works cited page.
• You may use any major style of citations you like (MLA, Chicago, APA). I would recommend the “author-date” version of Chicago style. It is easy to learn and easy to read. A helpful guide can be found here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Useful Links:

For more information on primary sources, secondary sources, and archives visit:  ​https://guides.nyu.edu/c.php?g=276619&p=1845101

For information on some archives at Fordham visit:
​https://www.fordham.edu/info/27396/archives_and_special_collections

Here are some archives that might help you get started:

• Duke University Digital Collections: https://repository.duke.edu/dc
  An especially good source for historical advertising.
• National Archives at NYC: https://www.archives.gov/nyc
  The local branch of the national archives. Check the national archives’ online collection for even more material.
• New York Public Library Archive: http://archives.nypl.org
• Tamiment Archives at NYU: https://guides.nyu.edu/c.php?g=276867&p=1846309

The best local source for historical material on radical politics and labor.

• UCLA Film and Television Archive: https://www.cinema.ucla.edu
• The Internet Archive (digital collection) visit: https://archive.org

Please note that JSTOR and similar online academic resources are not archives. They are search engines and aggregators—basically Google for scholars. Please find an organization or site whose explicit purpose is to preserve documents of historical significance for posterity.