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I'm going to tweet some key moments from the #historiansimagine webinar, but I'm also told that the recording will be available in about a week, and that it's also being recorded as a facebook live now. But if you'd like to join now, here's the info: https://www.centerwest.org/events/creativity
This first episode of #historiansimagine features @arikelman of @History_UCDavis. More about Ari if you aren't already familiar with his work: https://history.ucdavis.edu/people/akelman/
Kurt Gutjahr of @Centerwest reminds us of the upcoming editions, including @berincole in March! #historiansimagine
And our hosts for each #historiansimagine are Patricia Limerick, of @centerwest, and Matthew Frye Jacobson, from Yale.
This webinar session is trying something new: we'll start with this webinar, but then switch to a live Q&A session in another zoom room at 1 where we can all see each other. The link is being posted in the webinar. #historiansimagine
Limerick suggests that @arikelman might be classified as a "historian of mortality," who restores those who have died, especially violently, by bringing his vitality to their stories.
Kelman describes growing up with parents who are a child of immigrants and a child survivor of the Holocaust -- "I didn't register the impact that those stories had had on me until I was in graduate school...
that I did gravitate toward history and those histories of mortality because of the stories I grew up with around the Shabbat table."
Kelman says he was an "atrocious" high school student (claims that he only graduated because the vice principal wanted to get rid of him), but had a 10th grade AP History teacher who cast the teaching of history "as an expression of otherwise hidden stories." #historiansimagine
In graduate school, Kelman started thinking about the narrative work of history, citing Limerick as a way of thinking about storytelling in history, along with @wcronon's Nature's Metropolis, Richard White, Liz Cohen, and Jeanne Boydston as early influences.
Talking about his first book (A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans), Kelman warns current graduate students that it was a terrible choice as a dissertation: "it's too sprawling of a book...it's too complicated of a city." #historiansimagine
Jacobson counters by suggesting that there's no time like graduate school to choose an ambitious project! Kelman: "There's ambition, and then there's youthful indiscretion."
Kelman does agree, though, that he's a huge advocate of ambition and imagination in scholarly work. #historiansimagine
Asked about how he came to the conception of "a river and its city," Kelman says he came to that realization late in the work (which he says is typical of his work). He also notes that this emerged as a result of helpful conversations with others.
Kelman: "I think that the historian's job is to be endlessly empathetic and never sympathetic. That's the gig." #historiansimagine
Jacobson notes that the craft of history is maybe just now starting to realize that our own humanity is one of our best resources - refers to Saidiya Hartman's work as an example.
Conversation now turns to Kelman's "Misplaced Massacre" (the book that made me certain that I wanted to be a historian). #historiansimagine
Kelman: "I wanted to write a book that was worthy of those who were sharing their time with me."
Shout out to @TGAColorado who apparently was the person who convinced Kelman that he needed to include his own role in the story.
Kelman: "When I think about voice, when I think about threading these kinds of needles, I want to write a book that my mom would read." It's all about the "transmission of stories." #historiansimagine
(Kelman notes that Andrews was not the only person who made key interventions into his work on Misplaced Massacre). Part of our craft, he says, is sharing our work with smart colleagues and sometimes sharp critics. #historiansimagine
Jacobson points out this is a good lesson for grad students, too: published books have had many eyes on them, so don't compare your early work to their finished product.
Limerick asks about the practical details of how Kelman organized his writing in Misplaced Massacre. Kelman says he wrote 5 complete, very different drafts of the book (!!). #historiansimagine
In the penultimate draft, he story-boarded the whole book, something he also did for Battle Lines, his graphic novel on the Civil War.
