Tuesday begins a quick succession of miniature case studies, intended to help us consider some of the risks and rewards of drawing on social memory as intellectual history. None of these terms is settled in our minds; thus, I offer you this unit in our course primarily to explore. To aid that exploration, I'd like to shorten the critical reading so that you have time to explore our exhibit before class.
I'll ask that half the class read Wendy Hesford's "Memory Work" and half the class read the chapter from Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life. Let's arbitrarily split it up this way:
- Hesford -- Daniel, Devlin, Kaitlin, Christina, Mallorie, Shaimaa
- Heilbrun -- Alejandro, Eleanor, Jordan, Rachel, Sarah, Sidney
Each woman is writing from a real felt need, to her "academic sisters and brothers," about the vagaries of autobiographical writing, but for different reasons. Try to be attuned to what their reasons are. Give yourselves some time to work through their texts. What are some real barriers to writing lives as historical records?
Their arguments will guide our case study on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's "A Midwife's Tale," which was in turn based on Martha Ballard's diary, which she kept from 1785-1812. The diary itself has an interesting history, but we'll be focusing on Ulrich's digitized project called DoHistory. Here is what I need you to read before Tuesday's class so we can proceed with the case study:
- Project History
- Doing History
- One Rape, Two Stories
- Who Was Martha Ballard?
- The Project Itself Allow yourself at least 30 minutes to check out its parts -- take longer if you'd like!
Looking forward to it,
-Dr. Graban
