[Last week was
one of the busiest of my professional career, featuring a series of great
Boston events, culminating in the 51st Northeast
MLA convention. So this week I’ll recap that convention and those other
events, leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how
you can get involved!]
On two takeaways
from a wonderful talk on a vital new book.
My busy week
meant I didn’t get to too many of the city’s many commemorations of the Boston
Massacre’s 250th anniversary (all of which were helpfully
compiled by the public historian and BostonStudier
par excellence J.L. Bell). But I did have the chance to follow up my own
amazing experience giving a book talk at
the Massachusetts Historical Society by attending another such talk,
this time by my fellow AmericanStudier
Serena Zabin on her groundbreaking and timely new book, The
Boston Massacre: A Family History. My main point about that book is the
Reading Rainbow one, but here I
will highlight two takeaways, one on content and one on form, from Zabin’s
compelling talk about this crucial work.
My content
takeaway is on (a very quick and reductive restatement) of Zabin’s central
point, one implied by her provocative subtitle: that the British soldiers involved
in those March 1770 events had over their two years in Boston, for a variety of
reasons and in a number of significant ways, become part of the city’s evolving
community and family (literally, through events like marriage and childbirth and
the naming of god-parents and so on, as well as figuratively). Zabin pulls
together a tremendous amount of primary source research (utilizing MHS’s own collections as well
as many others) to make that case, and in so doing fundamentally reshapes our
collective memories and narratives not only of the Boston Massacre, but of
Boston, New England, America, and the 18th century (among other
subjects!). Getting to hear how she found those materials and developed those
arguments, as well as details and stories that flesh out those overarching
historical goals, made the book talk a perfect complement to the book itself.
My form takeaway
has to go with one particular word in that last sentence: stories. As with any
aspect of this profession, no matter how many book
talks (or talks of any kind) I get to deliver, I always feel that I have a
lot to learn about this genre, and learn particularly clearly from my inspiring
fellow book talkers and public scholars. One thing Zabin’s talk modeled
pitch-perfectly and thus really drove home for me was the central importance of
stories and story-telling to public history, and I would argue public
scholarship of any kind. I don’t know that the old-school
debate between “academic” and “narrative” history fully persists into 2020,
but I think there still can be a sense that those who tell historical stories
are somehow doing work that is distinct from (if not lesser than, although too
often that feels like part of the narrative) those who offer analysis. But to
me it’s precisely the opposite: stories are what connect us to history, and
what make it possible for us then to develop analyses and arguments and all
other kinds of perspectives. Zabin’s book talk, like her wonderful book, makes
that point clearly and potently.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. If you were
at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!
No comments:
Post a Comment