On Experience

This American history class I'm taking has done the most to make me feel at home in this place, outside of my husband and church people, since I arrived here. Last night's class did me so much good, because we were talking about memory studies, and the questionable reliability of oral accounts. Suddenly I was on solid footing -- these are questions I've been wrestling with since these kids were picking out their majors. (Okay, so most of them are the same age as me, and just took longer to get their first degrees, or are also high school teachers, but still.) I was so excited to be able to have that discussion about how you do history at all, if you can't fully trust your sources. What questions do you ask? How do we use sources?

The discussion was so lively that it began before the professor arrived to the classroom, and continued outside, after the class was over. I don't think I've argued from so many angles of grey areas. I had to remind one particularly idealistic lad, who was convinced that we have to be able relate an objective truth, that when we're dealing with masses of archival sources, or we're having to explain events simply to a first-year class, we come to a point where we have to make an interpretation. It's what we do, and there are going to be others who disagree with us, and that's okay.

I found myself introducing these first year MAs to the idea of applying a level of periodisation to a study (such as 1929-1933), but at the same time being open with the fact that this is debatable, and is "for the purposes of this study." I reminded them that we will be/are wearing two hats at the same time: we pursue an increasingly complex history in our research, and yet we teach a more simplified history (although we challenge the students to question their sources, and lead them toward that more complex history) to our students (or an even simpler history when we write encyclopedia entries, as I have done in the past few years).

Through all of this discussion, I came to a realisation: I have a voice, and I can speak from experience. Although I am still in the comparatively early stages of my academic career, I have taken part in a wide range of research and educational projects. I have extensive experience with archival research -- both personal papers and newspaper searches. I know how I can and cannot use oral histories (or "cannot without approval from the Research Ethics Board, which shall be the subject of another rant, because it was made for social sciences such as psychology and does not understand historians at all"). I have researched several topics where there was limited secondary source material and I had to make my own (frightened) interpretations, without any frame of reference. I have been referred to as "pioneer" in a field, and have been consulted with as an expert in another field. (And have had the proud moment of being cited extensively in someone else's footnotes.) I have lectured, led seminars and written online courses. (In fact, I have designed a course for another instructor to teach, to the point of writing the discussion questions and arranging for guest speakers.) I have presented my research at conferences and have defended my findings.

In other words, I had a couple of stunning moments in which my professor asked "Ms. [QoWP], since you have actually used [whichever method or theory we were discussing] in your research, what do you find are the implications for the field?"

(In other news, we had a bit of a discussion of "collective memory" and national myth-making, comparing the US to Canada, and I was far too much a prairie kid when we discussed Tommy Douglas and Louis Riel.)