#publichistory

[whencyclopedia]

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

This book is Tore Olsson's attempt to use the "Red Dead Redemption II" video game to propose a unique approach to teaching US History. Reflecting on the class that he designed around the game, this book is beneficial for general readers because of its engaging and narrative writing style, and it is a wonderful reference book for university researchers and faculty looking for innovative ways to transform their pedagogy.

Many university students today have complained about the dryness and boringness of their history courses. Tore Olsson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, who specializes in the US South and post-Civil War US, taught a new history course at his university in 2021 that approached US history through the popular video game Red Dead Redemption II, the most-played US-history-themed video game after The Oregon Trail. The course was a major success, drawing students from various backgrounds as well as major online attention. This book is a result of Olsson's pedagogical experiment. Instead of following the structure of a traditional history research monograph, this book's chapters are ordered to follow the storyline of Red Dead Redemption II. Written for the general public while also informative for pedagogical advancements for university-level faculty and high school teachers, this book is a wonderful and unique reflection on how certain themes in US history have been portrayed, written, rewritten, taught, and even weaponized.

Red Dead Redemption II, a new version of the 2010 game Red Dead Redemption, was developed by Rockstar Games and released in 2018. It instantly became a popular attraction. With its story set in 1899 US, players follow the fictional characters Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as they try to escape from federal pursuits after their robberies. These characters venture throughout the American West, South, Appalachia, and the Caribbean. Olsson recognizes both the game's merit in helping a broader audience to engage with history and places where the game strengthens stereotypes and retells historical narratives that historians have already deemed inaccurate or harmful. The book's three parts reflect the game's geographical settings (except the Caribbean). Each chapter focuses on one theme in US history during the Reconstruction era and the early 20th century. A chapter opens with a symbolic historical image of the theme, followed by how the game tells this history, and ends with an analysis of the accurate and inaccurate aspects of the game, ending with a professional historical overview of this topic. Some topics discussed include the Indian Wars, railroad development, cowboy culture, the Pinkertons, racial formation of American South cities, women's suffrage, and many others.

What makes this book important for today's scholars and readers is that, overarching all chapters, Olsson addresses the question of how history is portrayed and the conflicts over who gets to tell the history and how. How should someone balance the academic rigor of a history narration with the public accessibility of such a narration? Implicitly, a book like this one forces both the public history industry and history academia to reflect on themselves. Academic history monographs today can only dream about reaching as wide an audience as Red Dead Redemption II; Rockstar, with the pressure to make 'engaging,' 'fun,' and 'attractive' games to fulfill its financial pursuits, has to sacrifice some historical accuracy. More importantly, through the historical narrative choices that Rockstar makes, we also get to see some existing issues in the public perception of history today. For instance, even though the game takes place in four geographical settings, why is the game marketed as a Western game? This raises the issue of the image of the “American West” in popular culture and narratives. By including Confederate monuments in the game's fictional American South town of Saint Denis, what can we learn about the existing debates about public monuments happening throughout the US?

Public history is now a rather mature field. Although Olsson's work here could be categorized as public history, it is a specific approach within public history. It reminds readers that what we read in history books is never static information. They constantly change with shifts in political power, financial power, pop culture, and literature. In a sense, this book acts as a giant accompaniment encyclopedia to Red Dead Redemption II, allowing the public to both enjoy gamified history and learn history through what or why Rockstar chose to include, not include, and change. For scholars and educators, Olsson's book is a pedagogically pioneering work that acts as an important reference work for historians of any discipline and not just US history.

Read More

⇒ Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

[historyharvest-agross]

Week Six

This is week six of my time participating in the Public History Central Internship, and that means it is midterm evaluation week. With that in mind, I finished up the rest of the metadata sheets for the Francina Boykin folder from the Greenwood Cemetery History Harvest and I feel like I have come away from that with a lot of new knowledge and background for topics I did not know much about. We had our team meeting on Monday, where we have restructured the team into two new groups. There is now a team metadata and a team transcription. I have been restructured into team transcription, where my new role is to work with files from the Parramore Speaks project, which is really exciting. Parramore Speaks is an initiative/project run by the UCF RICHES team and the City of Orlando with the intention of preserving the history of Parramore and offering a wider range of accessibility to those stories and personal histories. My first assignment with this project will be to check preexisting documents for accuracy and then either fix or create abstracts and AV (audio-video) logs for each interview, starting with Reggie McGill. So far, I have been slightly confused, mostly because there are a lot of files in the folder, but I think I understand what to do, so my goal is to try and have the Reggie McGill folder finished by Friday and to have started on Walter Hawkins by next Monday.

When wrapping up the metadata sheets for the Greenwood Cemetery History Harvest, I came across some artifacts that were really fascinating. One of them was actually a series of artifacts. They were letters and written interviews for a project called “The Jones Town Story” by Mary Macfarlane. Reading through them, I saw some incredibly interesting insights shared by the interviewee, who was talking about the history of Jones Town. I learned that it was named after the first black couple to move to Orlando, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and the people of the town decided to name it Jones Town to honor them. I also learned about how the city of Orlando wanted to essentially gentrify the town, they wanted to clear it out and rebuild, so from about 1911-1913 the city “bought” the house and land from the residents for far less than what it was worth, moved the residents to the projects and tore down parts of the town. They also went into the cemetery and split it up into the “old” and “new” sections, separating those interred by race, going so far as to dig up the people at rest in order to move them to their respective side. In another artifact, a newspaper from 1998 which spoke about the efforts made by Ms. Francina Boykin to bring justice to the victims of the Ocoee Massacre, reading the article, I saw that the residents of Ocoee were still divided on the matter. Some thought that it wasn’t a massacre, and the mayor himself believed that Ms. Boykin and the rest of the research group and outreach members had ulterior motives. I felt like these sentiments from 1998, and the actions of the city of Orlando from 1911-1913 demonstrate the need for Public History as a field, and History in general. It is hard for people to understand the significance of people, events or locations when they don’t have access to the stories that fill in the blanks. If the general public don’t have the ability to learn about local history and hidden stories, it is hard to appreciate or understand certain aspects of life, which is where the goals of Public History as a discipline come into play, forging connections between communities and people, and allowing them to discover things they never knew.

[sergenoiret]

Madrid during 3rd public history conference of the Spanish PH association 😉

[roscoebarnes3]

Zion Chapel to celebrate Hiram Revels with bust in his honor

Rev. Birdon Mitchell, pastor of Zion Chapel A.M.E. Chapel, said Hiram Revels was a man of many accomplishments.

--------------

By Roscoe Barnes III

Natchez, MS, USA / ListenUpYall.com

Sep 6, 2023 | 3:56 p.m.

NATCHEZ, Miss. – Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church will celebrate the legacy of Hiram Rhodes Revels this month with a bust in his honor created by Bob Willis of Oklahoma. The bust will be unveiled in a ceremony in the church at 1 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 30, at 228 N. Dr. M.L. King St.

The Rev. Birdon Mitchell, pastor of Zion Chapel, said he was excited about the opportunity to pay homage to Revels.

A banner featuring Bishop Richard Allen and Hiram Revels is displayed on the second floor of Zion Chapel A.M.E. Chapel.

---------------

“I, along with the Zion Chapel family, am ecstatic that Hiram Revels, a former pastor of our church, the first president of Alcorn College, and the first person of color to serve in the United State Senate, is being recognized in our community,” he said. “The Lord’s name be praised! I’m truly thankful to all who are involved in making this event possible.”

The unveiling is free to the public. It is, in part, a celebration of Revels’ birthday, according to Norma West, event organizer. Revels was born on Sept. 27, 1827.

Revels became the first pastor to serve at Zion Chapel in the 1860s, and in 1870, he became the first African American lawmaker to serve in the United States Congress. Following his time in office, Revels became the first president of Alcorn A&M College, which is now Alcorn State University, in Lorman.

“Hiram Revels is an important national figure, and it is fitting that this bust will be placed at Zion Chapel, from whose pulpit he entered the United States Senate and made history,” said Carter Burns, executive director of Historic Natchez Foundation. “I’m thrilled to see him honored in this way.

Roscoe Barnes III, cultural heritage tourism manager for Visit Natchez, said that he and Visit Natchez are assisting with the event.

“We are proud of Pastor Mitchell and Zion Chapel for honoring Hiram Revels with this important work of art by Bob Willis,” he said. “We’re asking local residents and visitors alike to come out to this church program and learn more about Revels and his role in Natchez’s rich cultural history.”

Sculptor Bob Willis was selected by Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church to sculpt the bust of Hiram Revels.

---------------

The ceremony will feature music by Tony Fields and presentations by Mitchell, Willis, and Mayor Dan Gibson.

Willis is a retired pastor with a passion for telling stories through his art. His work shows a special interest in Natchez’s history. Over the years, he has sculpted several busts related to Natchez, including one of John Roy Lynch, which he donated to the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture.

Bob Willis’ bust of John R. Lynch is on display at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture. Lynch was born enslaved in 1847 in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. In 1872, he became the first African American speaker of the Mississippi state house. He also represented Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives.

---------------

Willis said he appreciates the opportunity to recognize Revels through his work. “It was my honor to sculpt a bust of Hiram Revels, recognizing his faithful service to his community, to our Country, and to our God,” he said.

For more information on the Hiram R. Revels unveiling ceremony, call 601-807-0454.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

"The real insight is that tyranny does not begin with violence. It begins with acquiescence. And resistance starts when someone stops cooperating with the lie."

"Protest stays within the bounds of what the system will allow; resistance shatters the boundaries."

"(Hannah) Arendt warns us that the greatest danger isn't cruelty - it's the quiet bureaucratic normalization of cruelty."

So proud of my former thesis advisor, dropping some great resistance history analysis.

#Repost @tad.stoermer:

Let’s talk about how to think about resistance as coherent thing, with a history, a vocabulary, and a philosophy. Thoreau started us down this road — but we can’t end with what he wrote in Civil Disobedience. Keep in mind that his original, and preferred, title was “Resistance to Civil Government: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” When you combine that work with his Plea for Captain John Brown, you get a clearer picture of the foundation of American resistance thought. But we need to put that into a global context.

Let me know your thoughts on this as I continue writing the book on it.

#publichistory #resistancehistory #howrevolutionary #thoreau #albertcamus #resistance

[silkdamask-blog]

Talking about textiles—production, identification, use & reuse w/ #museumstudies/#publichistory graduate & undergrads for our hands-on #textile #lab. Image: Silk ribbon & trims on a 1760s+ dress weight brocaded silk fragment

[violivs]

Webseries Moodboards: Public History (2019 - ?)

“Elizabeth Trotwood Copperfield lives forever in the land of dreams and shadows... but I’m here. My name’s David Trotwood Copperfield, and... it’s nice to meet you!”

[alabama-local-history]

There’s an old building in Madison, Alabama, on Slaughter Road as you come up on Eastview, across the street from St. Andrew’s Anglican Mission Church (the third picture, on the right). I’ve passed it every other day my entire life living here and I’ve only ever heard once that it used to be an old strawberry or fruit stand, and that was from my dad. No one else I’ve asked knows for sure though. Reminds me of another nearby building that I’ll get to soon though.

Purely speculation but it is entirely within the realm of possibility that it used to be an old farmhouse for the farmland it currently stands guard over today. Madison used to be sparsely populated until the construction of the railroad and station in 1856, then known as Madison Station.

If you know what it used to be leave a reply!

[elizabethiris]

Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸. A castle in Rotherham, England? The castle was built as a hunting lodge for Thomas Howard, the 3rd Earl of Effingham in the late eighteenth century. The castle got its name from the 1773, Boston Tea Party. Thomas was serving in the Coldstream Guards (the oldest continuously serving regiment in the British Army) and supported protests by the colonists in the USA over taxation without representation. When Thomas's regiment was ordered to America on active service, he resigned rather than support something that he did not believe in. #rotherham #southyorkshire #history #britishhistory #england #historyofengland #americanconnection #bostonteaparty #unusualhistory #hiddenhistory #bostonpark #huntinglodges #oldbuildings #oldbuilding #publichistory #heritage #outandaboutwithliz #castle (at Boston Castle) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCNnIrlFeqy/?igshid=1jgssfjbi5erm

[underappreciatedrochestaria-blog]

Mary E. Clarke (1924-2011) Born: December 3rd, 1924, Rochester, NY Died: June 10th, 2011, Austin, TX

Short Bio: Mary Clarke was an officer in the United States Army where she was recognized as being the director of the Women's Army Corps, she was also recognized as the first woman to receive the rank of major general in the US Army. Clarke served in the Army for 36 years, enlisting August of 1945 and promoted to Major general June of 1978, her record standing as the longest career of a woman in the US Army. She would, later on, be given an honorary master degree by Norwich University in military sciences and continue working into her retirement, being appointed to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services until her death in June of 2011.

[historyharvest-agross]

Week Five

This week I have been working on folder B for the Greenwood Cemetery History Harvest Artifacts provided by Ms. Francina Boykin. There was a VFW Women’s Veterans Day event held on Thursday which some members of the team were representing UCF at. I was unfortunately not able to attend; however, the event seemed to have gone well, and the hope is that this can lead to more connections within the local communities. There will be a team meeting next week on Monday, which I look forward to, it will be nice to speak with everyone on the team as we update each other on the progress being made with our respective assignments. I feel as if I have been working a little slow on my assigned artifacts, so my goal for the upcoming month is to work on working at a faster pace while still correctly completing my work.

So far, the artifacts I have been completing metadata sheets for are still focused around the Ocoee massacre, the First Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unity parade, and July Perry. A common theme around these artifacts is the idea of community. The pictures from the parade and events all show a community, the people of Ocoee coming together as a group to celebrate and support each other. The pictures show all manner of people, the mayor, city council members, schoolchildren and locals all gathered together to celebrate Ocoee and the unity of their town. These photographs give such an interesting perspective into the parade, showing interactions between community members in the moment that they were taken. Often in the field of History, we focus on drawing connections and finding patterns between events, people or actions. As I have observed in both History and Anthropology classes, there is also an emphasis on “snapshots” of points or moments in time, whether that comes from written record, photographs, paintings, archaeological sites, or tangible items. There is specifically an idea taught in anthropology that a series of related objects can offer you a “snapshot” of the point in time they represent, therefore giving you a glimpse or better understanding of human behavior or collective ideals. I felt like this ties in rather well with the goals and intentions of the study of Public History. By using these “snapshots” we gain a better idea of what a specific group or community held as important ideals, and how certain behaviors connect to events in the past and current actions they take. The best way to demonstrate this is by connecting the historical artifacts groups of the 1920 Ocoee Massacre and the death of July Perry to the modern photographs of the Unity Parade. That is directly reflective of changing ideals and sentiments, and the want or need for a community to be brought together and stay connected after events of the past.

[roscoebarnes3]

My article published by BlackPast.org

[sergenoiret]

Alcune fotografie el convegno sui Laboratori di #publichistory a confronto: ricche giornate di riflessione (1-2 dicembre) su come funzionano in Italia che si è svolta all’università di Napoli l’Orientale https://www.unior.it/agenda/view_event/3021/i-laboratori-di-public-history-nelle-universita-italiane-attivita-sfide-prospettive.html (presso Naples, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clrcm3BrKre8aFFq8ZFl3oRYuVPomgkCr9R10k0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[pilgrimartfoundation]

💣Oh we got stories #Elon, and Gina P. Puppet will tell them right alongside these folx! #BeingAndBelonging @visual_aids #daywithoutart 💥 Seven artist videos centering the emotional reality of living with HIV today💥: Camila Arce @sidiosa Clifford Prince King @cliffordprinceking Jaewon Kim @etc.1 Mikiki @mkkultra Jhoel Zempoalteca & La Jerry @jhoelze @__lajerry Davina “Dee” Conner & Karin Hayes @pozitivelydee @karin_hayes Santiago Lemus & Camilo Acosta Huntertexas @santiagolemuss @huntertexasvideo 12/1/22 6-8p @peter_stebbins #walbridge supported by @laempaf with a lot of help from @humanitiestruck, @cfinkbanjo @drjulisoulhealer #publichistory *PR & RSVP link in bio* #holla #names #ginappuppet #dabomb #dcarts 💥 (at Studio House at Walbridge) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClPf2LfMd13/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[coppercity]

I often write for Not Even Past, the digital history magazine of the UT Austin History Department. Last year, they included me in the author spotlight series.

[moneymyboyfriendowesme]

This week upstate featured several fantastic diner meals, and an introduction to some of the different kinds of prefab buildings available through the first half of the 20th century to enterprising chef/owners. The Historic Village Diner in Red Hook, NY is a 1920s Silk City diner, a popular prefabricated dining car line manufactured by the Paterson Vehicle Company. Blondie’s Trolley Diner in Kingston was manufactured in the 1930s by the Jerry O'Mahony Diner Company, the largest diner manufacturer in pre-WW II America. A 1943 Jerry O'Mahony catalog boasts that, "owners of Jerry O'Mahony dining cars are prosperous business men. Proven figures show them to have an actual actual net income of $5,000 to $10,000 per year." Pictured here is the Elizaville Diner of (you guessed it) Elizaville, NY. It's a 1956 Kullman Company diner, and was originally the Eat Well Diner of Lebanon, PA — you can see the original name on the jukebox! #diners #prefabarchitecture #publichistory #americancapitalism #thefoodtourbegins #mydinerorderisablt (at The Elizaville Diner) https://www.instagram.com/p/BslzwgXhMen/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=o5mg205xxd8y