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By Dr. Shrout

Today’s reading is all about technology and war. In class, we’ll be considering whether enslaved people, fires, railroads or even letters can be considered technologies of war, but I wanted to pick up on something Alec said in his post. He notes that the ease of access to information today fundamentally changes our reading on disasters and ruin – “video cameras and high-def, color photograph….create more vivid and realistic representations of destruction.” I think that this is an excellent point, but I wonder how people in the 19th century would have understood letters and newspaper accounts. Not having access to “modern” technology, would they have considered such communiques the height of wartime communication technology? In particular, I was thinking about this exhibit, which uses Neatline to overlay Civil War letters on the sites they describe. This is an interesting way to combine modern and 19th century technology – and maybe worth pursuing for a final project like the one Kurt proposes?

Others of you wrote about the Google doodle celebrating the Pony Express. When I was a child, I remember being surprised that the Civil War and the Pony Express were contemporaneous events – they seemed to take place in two different worlds: one the battle-torn mid-Atlantic and Southern states, and the other the “wild” West. Both Avery and Kurt commented on the utility of the Pony Express game for showing how essential communication and transportation were in 19th century America. (For those interested in continuing a discussion about history and games, I hope you’ll stop by and chat with our visiting speaker – Meg Stivison – on Monday the 27th.) Avery also rightly notes that by focusing on the Pony Express riders, we miss the story of those waiting for the mail. Perhaps we can think about the game in the context of the post office map from a few classes ago, which showed how central post offices were – especially for life in the sparsely-settled American West.

Finally, Cordelia and Carolyn reported on the history presentations in Hance. Both seemed taken with the work on the CIA in the first half of the twentieth century. Kate LeGrand’s project takes the form of historical fiction (I assume that she is a student in Dr. Wertheimer’s class?) – I think that there are some interesting intersections between the historical methodology of writing fiction about the past and creating non-traditional historical works. Both force the author to think about how the form of their project impacts the argument. I want to close with a lengthy quotation from Carolyn’s post. In response to a question about

“the value of presenting history with historically-accurate creative dialogue and characters that very likely could have existed, rather than presenting what is “known” to have happened in an engaging way. “

Carolyn reported that Kate

“Responded that the use of dialogue and a plot engages people with the subject of history who might never pick up a nonfiction text on the same subject. The dialogue particularly connects readers with the characters, and makes the historical events more lifelike.”

This is a very good point to take away as you start to plan and execute your final projects!