A screenshot of the Google Hangout interface, courtesy of Adina Langer

And then…one by one, our panelists began breaking the bad news. They couldn’t make the trip. What to do? Everyone was still excited to talk about their work and their audiences, but we couldn’t fund them to get to Canada. Adina and I decided to turn to some of the same technology that had allowed us to collaborate on planning the panel in the first place, and see if we could make the show still go on.

In working up a panel proposal, the two of us had used a collaborative Google Document that we both had access to, and as the conference neared, we expanded that into a shared Google Drive folder that the whole panel could see, where we all could share our notes for our presentations, to foster a sense of conversation between everyone. It made sense, then, to try to keep it within the Google family for the actual presentation. With a quick download of a free plugin, everyone could be invited to join a Google Hangout for voice and video chatting.

This worked very well between just Adina and me, and we were even able to share Powerpoint presentations from each other’s screens. Would the day be saved? Well…let’s just say that the trial run with the whole cast was not so smooth. Screens froze, people were kicked out of the Hangout for no apparent reason, and nothing worked as it does on the charming commercials.

We arrived in Ottawa very worried, with copies of everyone’s Powerpoints, and as much of their presentations as possible. We booked a conference call through Adina’s cell phone as backup. Would this be a disaster?

But then, a conference miracle. Everything, more or less, worked. Yes, there were moments of hesitation, where we feared we had lost people to the depths of the internet. Yes, we had to ban people from live-tweeting the panel to reserve bandwidth for the Hangout. But it worked the best it had at any point. It was not perfect. But the NCPH audience got the benefit of our panelists talking on their subjects, even in the face of budget cuts. Our panelists were able to see and hear the audience, and take some questions. The two of us who were able to make it to Ottawa were joined virtually by the full complement of other panelists. It was definitely better than what we thought might happen when it first became clear only Adina and I would make it in person.

So given that budgets are tight all over, and this situation is likely to happen again to other panel organizers, what went right and what went wrong?

I would have preferred a format that allowed more conversation to happen organically among members of the panel, and between panelists and the audience. As it was, the technology hindered much of that, and created artificial barriers to communication. I am not sure there is a free solution to that, however. Google Hangout seems to be, at this moment, the only free, multi-person video-chat platform. It does work better with fewer numbers of people. The best ways to enhance the experience are to have no other programs running on the computer at the time, have a wired, rather than wireless, connection, and use a microphone or headset to minimize background noise.

We found that having panelists use Screenshare to run their own Powerpoints was too much for the Hangout to sustain, so Adina and I had to work the Powerpoint from Ottawa, while panelists spoke. This, understandably, had its awkward moments. It also meant that the panelists could not be seen as they spoke. Having two projector screens would have been nice to help with this problem.

We would have benefited from higher bandwidth in the conference center, so that panel attendees could have continued tweeting, blogging, and notetaking as they listened. I think as conferences continue to be live-blogged, bandwidth and other tech amenities will increasingly be upgraded.

All in all, this experiment in far-flung panel presenting worked better than I feared it would, though less perfectly than I perhaps had been led to expect by a world in which every problem is presented as having a high-tech solution. It would have been preferable to have all of our panelists on site, as the “conferring” part of the “conference” was hindered, and only a basic level of presenting was possible.

The virtual panel worked for us, to solve a problem that emerged at the last minute. I do worry though about this becoming the wave of the future, as travel budgets tighten perhaps permanently. If it becomes only the representatives of the well-endowed universities that can afford to be physically present, while NPS or other government and non-profit staff are confined to their computer screens in the digital conference, it might create separate experiences that cannot be easily bridged by technology, however advanced the interface. Our Google Hangout meant that we did not hang out at the Scone Witch with any of our 9/11 panelist colleagues, and that was a real shame, for them and for us.

 ~ Alima Bucciantini, Appalachian State University

CFP:  “Talking about protest – Oral history methodology in social and political movements research,” Sept. 20, 2013, Warwick, U.K.
EXTENDED DEADLINE:  June 2, 2013

CFP:  Panel on “Co-Creation, the Public and the Archaeological Record” for Society for American Archaeology Meetings, April 24 – 27 Austin, Texas, U.S.
DEADLINE:  June 15, 2013

CFP:  REHAB 2014 International Conference on Preservation, Maintenance and Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings and Structures, March 19-21, 2014, Tomar, Portugal
DEADLINE:  June 30, 2013

CFP: IMAGES (3)/Images of the City Conference, Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey
DEADLINE:  June 30, 2013

CONF: Food in History: Anglo-American Conference 2013, July 11-13, 2013, London, U.K.

CONF:  Digital Directions: Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections, July 21-23, 2013, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.

EDU: Special Summer Course on Teaching History with Museums, July 8-18, 2013, Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.

FUNDING: Charlton Oral History Research Grant available from Baylor University Institute for Oral History
DEADLINE:  June 21, 2013

New Reviews from H-Net:

• São Paulo: Perspectives on the City and Cultural Production (Foster)
• American Documentary Film: Projecting the Nation (Geiger)
• Transforming 1916: Meaning, Memory and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Easter Rising (Higgins)
• Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space (Araujo)
• Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture (Rubin)

This 1954 Airstream trailer is the home of UL Lafayette’s Museum on the Move. Photo: Museum on the Move.

Building upon our innovative approaches to teaching and practicing Public History, the History Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is proud to announce an exceptional project called Museum on the Move. Public History students will outfit a vintage Airstream trailer (left) with an interpretive exhibit that will then hit the road to take history directly out of the classroom and to the public. Exhibits will be created on a rotating basis and require the melding of two courses and a cohort of students.

The first course will be a traditional history course where students conduct research projects geared toward the planned exhibit. The next phase of the project is for a Museum Studies course where students re-craft the research done in the first class to create exhibit components that they will install in the trailer. Once the exhibit is up and rolling, the trailer will be sent out on short runs to venues around the state where the students’ (and the program’s) work will be on display.

The first planned exhibit will be on Louisiana Women and it is being timed to coincide with the publication of Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 2 (University of Georgia Press) being edited by the department’s own Dr. Mary Farmer-Kaiser. Students currently enrolled in her course on Louisiana Women are pursuing their studies with an eye toward the future exhibit and are excited to be a part of something with such potential for hands-on success. In the end, it is our intent for the program to teach students the methods and value of creative approaches to practicing history and to establish a recognizable product in the form of rotating exhibit topics in a compelling package. The trailer has been purchased, the class is underway, and everything is coming together.

~ Bob Carriker, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Senators Howard Baker (R-TN) and Sam Ervin (D-NC) cast votes during the Senate Watergate Committee hearings of 1973. Seated behind the senators is the committee deputy counsel Rufus Edmisten, whose oral history interview is included in the collection of the U.S. Senate Historical Office. (Photo courtesy Senate Historical Office.)

During the month of May 2013, on www.senate.gov, the U.S. Senate Historical Office looks back 40 years to one of the Senate’s most important investigations. The Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, more commonly known as the Watergate Committee, questioned the president’s closest advisors about the break-in and cover-up at the Watergate office complex and other “illegal and improper campaign practices” that occurred during the presidential campaign of 1972.

Hearings began in closed session on March 28, 1973, and then continued in open, televised sessions on May 17. Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina chaired the committee, with Tennessee’s Howard Baker serving as vice-chair, ably assisted by their majority and minority counsels, Sam Dash and Fred Thompson.

Under the guidance of Senators Ervin and Baker, and backed by bipartisan support of the Senate, the Watergate Committee produced much of the evidence that led to the August 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon. The Watergate Committee also established an important legislative legacy.

As the Watergate Committee continued its work, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration prepared for an anticipated impeachment trial. Assisted by long-time Senate parliamentarian Floyd Riddick, the Rules Committee held its own set of executive session hearings to lay the groundwork for a presidential impeachment trial.

Since its first inquiry in 1792, Congress has conducted hundreds of investigations, fulfilling a constitutional oversight responsibility while serving as the eyes and ears of the American public. During the Civil War, Congress created the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to oversee wartime activities of the Lincoln administration.  Throughout its history the Senate has investigated a wide array of issues, including organized crime, the defense industry, and Wall Street banking practices, revealing some of its most interesting stories and personalities, but few investigations have proved to be as consequential as Watergate. For further information, contact historian@sec.senate.gov.

~ Betty Koed, Associate Historian, United States Senate

CFP: “Second-Class Scholars?: Outside the Ivory Tower, Off the Tenure Track” roundtable participants sought, Nov. 8-10, 2013, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
DEADLINE:  May 17, 2013

CFP: One Archipelago, Many Stories: Integrating Our Narratives, August 30-31, 2013, Mangilao, Guam
DEADLINE:  June 1, 2013

CFP: World Congress of Environmental History, July 7-14, 2014, Guimarães, Portugal
DEADLINE:  June 15, 2014

CFP: Special Issue of Collection Management  - “We’re Moving, Please Pardon Our Dust: A New Collection Management Paradigm”
DEADLINE:  June 24, 2013

CFP: Oral History Forum d’Histoire Orale 2014 Special Issue: “Human Rights and oral history: stories of survival, healing, redemption, and accountability”
DEADLINE:  Sept. 15, 2013

CFP: Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Ransoming Practices, Oct. 25-26, 2013, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

CONF: Centre on Human Rights in Conflict workshop on Law, Faith and Historical Memory, June 12, 2013, Stratford, U.K.

EDU:  “Assessing the U.S. Constitution: 21st Century Resposes to 18th Century Assumptions” seminar with Sanford Levinson, Sept.-Nov. 2013, Washington, D.C., U.S.
APPLICATION DEADLINE:  May 15, 2013

EXH:  “There is no There There,”  An Interactive Pop-Up Oral History Exhibit, May 17, 2013, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

PUB:  Three years of “The Historic Environment:  Policy & Practice” journal content available free until June 15, 2013

Then I went to Ottawa for the conference and, like many people there, ended up fixated on something between a disaster movie and a cops-and-robbers drama unfolding at a distance, mostly via my Facebook feed on my iPhone. Mobile phones were not only a way to keep up with the story of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, but part and parcel of the story itself, with spectators’ cell-phone photos and video circulating virally once the suspects in the bombing were pinpointed. Throughout the day when much of the city was on “lockdown,” I was receiving text alerts from Tufts telling me how to “shelter in place.” Everything we’d been covering in my class was playing out on my phone’s tiny screen almost simultaneously with the actual events in Boston.

So there was a lot to talk about when I went back to class the following Monday. And all of it made Vittorio Marchis’ dissection of a telephone at the conference particularly fascinating for me.

Vittorio Marchis anatomizes a telephone

Marchis is a mechanical engineer and historian of technology who directs the Historical Documentation Centre and Museum of the Politecnico of Turin, Italy. He has developed a performance form he calls a “machine autopsy,” based on the late 18th century public lectures presented by anatomists but interweaving an extraordinary variety of illustrative material—everything from patent applications to poetry and pop culture—to create a close reading of the physical, social, and cultural body of a given machine. In this case, the corpse was a late 1970s telephone manufactured in Canada, which Marchis dismantled into its component parts. A lecturer read key texts interspersed with Marchis’ commentary on the dissection, producing a deconstruction of not only the machine but also the human/telephone relationship across its 140-year span. “What kind of histories,” Marchis asked as he removed the molded plastic cover—so 70s!—“are hidden under the carapace of this animal?”

“Moralité, tranquillité, félicité. – La cour téléphonique” from Albert Robida’s “Le vingtième siècle” (1883).

Perhaps because I’d spent the previous couple of weeks finally overcoming my own reluctance to join the smart-phone era, I was particularly struck by the evidence of how long a history there is of uncertainty about this relationship. For every upbeat embrace of the new techology—Albert Robida’s vision of phone-enabled courtship in a futuristic 1883 novel (at left) or the exuberant “Telephone Hour” in Bye Bye Birdie—there have been other, more anxious expressions, ranging from the careful instructions for use that have accompanied every new generation of telephone technology to the classic Sesame Street scene of Martians attempting to identify and communicate with a telephone—“a metaphor,” Marchis noted, “for what happens when people enter into a connection with something impossible to understand.” Elizabeth Richards’ punning 1890 poem “Eletelephony” was an early articulation of the strange blends and disembodiments that the telephone created, while Allen Ginsberg’s “I am a Victim of Telephone” cursed the growing ubiquity of the technology while also recognizing how embedded it had already become in our lives by the 1960s:

When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the convention floor
the phone also chimes in ‘rush up to Harlem with us and see the riots’
Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the world beating at once…

That poem seemed bizarrely apt on that Friday in Ottawa while I was sneaking glances at my own phone to see what was happening in Boston. What would Ginsberg make of a world so hyper-connected that atomized bits of information transmitted by geographically-distant friends have become, for many of us, a primary kind of news media? How should we parse the moment of silence the following Monday that marked the precise instant of the Marathon bombing, during which the Boston Globe blacked out its online operations for a minute while the Twitter commentary on the tribute generated lots of digital noise?  How to frame the fact that I can download a recording of Ginsberg reading his poem onto my phone with just a few taps of my finger?

The dissected pieces made the rounds of the audience. Photo: Serge Noiret

These moments are dense and often baffling. By grounding them in specific technologies and inventions, Vittorio Marchis helped to re-embody and re-emplace histories of technology and discourse that are, on the one hand, stunningly ordinary, and on the other, unimaginably complex. I don’t know why it reassures me to know that I’m part of a long history of ambivalence about the telephone, but it does. It also helps to know that the twists and turns of this cultural history can be traced in surprisingly precise ways. In the guts of the half-dissected machine, for example, Marchis pointed out a couple of mechanisms where the analog was just beginning to give way to the electronic—a tiny opening toward the digitally-mediated culture that most of us now inhabit.

Sharing the pieces of the telephone after the autopsy

To me, these kinds of insights are where public history can take us when it doesn’t try too hard to resolve all the questions or tidy the edges of knowledge. Marchis refused to be concerned about which category things belonged to—science, art, history—and pursued his own curiosity across all of those boundaries. At the very end of his performance, he also underscored the ritual aspects of this kind of exploration, when he said that he saw this kind of public lecture as a rite undertaken with the participation of the audience, whom he then invited to come forward and take a piece of the anatomized body. People flocked to the front of the room and reached for bits of wire and plastic that had been transformed into meaningful artifacts by an hour’s close and careful attention. Several paused first to memorialize the dissection table with a quick photograph on their phones. Ordinary and extraordinary reality merged for a moment, exposing the essential strangeness of our attempt to connect across time and distance and the near-miraculous quality of human imagination that occasionally allows us to do it.

~ Cathy Stanton teaches in the Anthropology Department at Tufts University and practices public history in a variety of settings.

(Photos are by the author unless otherwise credited.  Additional photos from the April 19, 2013 machine autopsy in Ottawa can be found in NCPH’s Flickr stream and Serge Noiret’s Google+ album.)

To participate in this and future TweetChats, you will need to sign up for a Twitter account by going to www.twitter.com. When it’s time for the chat, go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter #phconchat as the chat hashtag. Alternatively, you can work with a special Twitter browser like TweetDeck. Let us know if you have any questions in advance of the chat, and we hope to see you there on Monday!

~ The Consultants’ Corner Editorial Team (@NCPHconsultants)

• “A Speed-Brake on the Omnipresence of the Past.”  The New York Times’s Bill Keller on “Erasing History.”
• NEH Chairman Jim Leach to Resign. The ninth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities will be leaving effective the first week of May.
• Find A Map from Almost Any Time and Place Online. The Digital Public Library of America announces the addition of a  treasure trove of 38,000 historical maps from a private collection.
• Results of Humanities “Alt[ernative]-Ac[ademic]” Career Survey. “Some humanities disciplines, such as history, do have a strong tradition in public engagement; public history is a well-developed sub-discipline….”
• Resources for the Consulting Historian.  “After discussions at the 2013 NCPH conference… I’ve decided to aggregate those resources into a list so that others with similar questions have a ‘jumping off’ point as they start explore the private sector for themselves.”

NCPH

• Consultants’ Monthly TweetChat. Monday, May 6, at 4pm Eastern.  The topic will be “International Perspectives in Consulting.”  Instructions for participating are here.
• Beginning to Make a DIF.  We announced a Digital Integration Fund (DIF) during the NCPH annual meeting and are asking for your support.  Help us make a DIF!  The fund will support History@Work and the continuing creation of a lively central gathering-place for practitioners, scholars, and their many publics and expand the possibilities for peer review.
• Fired Up about the Public History Field?  Suggest good people for next year’s NCPH election slate!
• More Photos from Ottawa Meeting.  We’ve added new images to the Flickr page for the NCPH annual meeting.  We encourage you to share your own images from the conference on the NCPH Facebook page or by tweeting using the #NCPH2013 hashtag.
• Calling All Autopsy Witnesses.   If you attended Public Plenary speaker Dr. Vittorio Marchis’s autopsy of a telephone at the Ottawa meeting and took home a piece, please consider sending a photo of yourself holding your prize (email ncph@iupui.edu). We’d like to reassemble the telephone virtually by grouping the parts.

CFP: Film, History and Public Memory Conference, Oct. 4, 2013, Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland
DEADLINE: June 2, 2013

CFP: Remembering in a Globalizing World: The Play and Interplay of Tourism, Memory, and Place, September 8-10, 2014, Le Chambon sur Lignon, France
DEADLINE: Nov. 30, 2013

CFP: WGBH Media Library and Archives Opportunity for Digital Humanities Scholars

CONF: Digital Acrobatics: Performing the Circus Oz Living Archive, July 4-5, 2013, Melbourne, Australia

FUNDING: Deadline Extension for NEH Grant Opportunity: Created Equal film sets and public programming grants
DEADLINE: May 15, 2013

PUB: Table of Contents for Oral History Review Volume 40 Issue 1 Winter-Spring 2013

Poster from first May Day rally officially allowed by the Turkish government since 1977. The rally brought 200,000 people to Taksim Square in Istanbul. The poster uses the image from the rally held in 1977. Collection of the author.

As a trade union leader and a political activist, I had occasions to attend national and international events. Often, other attendees would bring posters from their respective organizations. I would usually take one of each because I was attracted to either the graphics or the issue or both. After a few years of this, and having obtained a critical mass, I decided to try to raise some modest funds for inexpensive frames and create a couple of exhibits. It seemed a shame to have these interesting posters sitting in my attic.

The project started off modestly as I had a demanding full-time job and other commitments. The number of framed posters began increasing, as did the number of exhibits.

Flash forward 15 years and 4,000 posters later, and I now find myself staging at least three exhibits a month. The themes of the exhibits pretty much identify the content of the posters in the exhibits: May Day, International Women’s Day, Health & Safety, Strike, The 99% Resist, Diversity, Workers’ Struggles, the Struggle for Women’s Equality, the Peace Dove, Anti-Apartheid, Green Politics, Cuban Political Posters, and Art for a Cause. There are more waiting in the wings for funding.

Socialist Workers campaign poster from the 1976 U.S. Presidential election . Collection of Stephen Lewis.

Organizations in many countries use posters as a way to communicate ideas and messages to their audience. Posters are sometimes used as billboards and are pasted on walls, fences, and poles all over a city. Unions sometimes hang posters in work places to warn of dangers, educate about benefits or inspire actions. Posters sometimes use mainly the written word to communicate a message. Other times they rely on creative art to communicate the idea. It is an art form that is easily accessible to many people.

My posters are from many different countries, in a number of languages, and range over the past 60 years. Most were created in print shops, but some were some were done in the field during armed conflict. They range in size. The Italians are particularly fond of large posters.

I’ve learned on the job about what type of frame is easiest to work with, how to frame, how to do placards, places to exhibit, ways to photograph the posters, and other skills to make the exhibits happen. It continues to be a learning process.

Poster from the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee, 1976. Collection of Stephen Lewis.

Many of my exhibits happen in the public libraries in Massachusetts. I’ve learned that librarians are tenacious defenders of free speech, and that hundreds of people pass through libraries each month. The exhibits have ranged from 20 posters up to 60 posters. It depends on the size of the exhibition space. It is always an experience walking into an exhibit space for the first time. Each one is different and has its own idiosyncrasies. It’s always a challenge making the adaptation.

Most exhibits are viewed by people who self-select attending the particular exhibit or museum. An advantage of exhibiting at public libraries is that people who visit there are not, for the most part, seeking out my exhibit. They are looking for books, music, computers etc., but when they walk in, there are the posters. I have a two-page handout available for people to take away that gives an overview of the theme of the exhibit and a brief bio and contact information about me.

60th anniversary commemoration of 1934 truckers’ strike in Minneapolis. Collection of Stephen Lewis.

I discovered that I was no longer just a political activist, but also a bit of a historian, when I attended and presented at the 2013 NCPH convention in Ottawa. While some of the minutia presented in workshops was over my head, I was very impressed with the dedication, smartness and personability of my fellow attendees. What might have been helpful at the Ottawa convention, for people like myself, would be a workshop like “Preservation of History for Beginners.”  Give attendees five minutes or so to present what they are doing and then receive some brief feedback from a panel of three experts.

While the overwhelming response of people who view my exhibits is favorable, there are some reactionaries who take issue with just the idea of trade unions or find the progressive themes distasteful. They would just as soon make some of those histories vanish. This would be a tragedy for the type of posters I exhibit because for the most part, the history, like culture, that is presented to society, is dominated by the powerful. My exhibits are more about working people, labor unions, people who do not have power but challenge it, and so the ability to commemorate and present these events and issues is much more limited. I think historians need to be conscious about whose history they are presenting, and be prepared to take risks by sometimes challenging the dominant thinking.

~ Stephen Lewis

Anyone interested in communicating about these thoughts or about posters is welcome to contact the author at lewisposters@gmail.com.