Discussion
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(Dis)Placed Histories Manifesto, March 2018
Reading Primary and Secondary Sources PPT
From “The Politics of Neighborhood History” class on 2-5-18
Cathy Stanton
Big Takeaway: “Everything we do is inherently political to a certain extent; to minimize any potential bias in public work is to accept criticism as part of the process of creating a holistic picture of a past’s narrative.”
Point: “‘Historians are reluctant to describe themselves as advocates, activists, or political actors per se.” Why is that? Should they be given a voice or platform? How does this mentality give rise to hate speech?”
Point: “It is interesting to read how public historians are reluctant in working on some projects and then to play it safe. I think this is because it is hard to tell an entire history of something and to decide what to include — and, if included, is it exemplifying all perceptions?”
Quotation: “Yet may of us are motivated by values that lead us to challenge exclusionary or limiting narratives about the past and to question — and sometimes to confront — the workings of power in both past and present.” Noting politics of knowledge, the importance of oral history/narrative in creating accurate representations of the past
Point: Importance/Power of public historians and social/political issues; Difficult to do job and not become part of the impact of these issues.
Nancy Mirabal
Point: If “spaces are not neutral” who decides who gets access to it? Who decides what gets built/demolished? Who can tell the history of the space? (p. 10) How do you strike a balance between improving your neighborhood while avoiding displacement?
Point: On how memory of or memories of a place are preserved: “Whose memories are the ones that we are allowed to remember?”
Quotation: “For the collective memory of space to be reconstituted there needs to be a mutual forgetting of what came before the constructions of new buildings, restaurants, and businesses.”
Quotation: “I realized that this area is littered with memorials. At that moment, they appeared to be tomb stones. They were nebulous reminders that something had existed here before, but what? Like tombstones, unless you’re searching for one in particular, they are pretty easy to ignore.”
Smith & Schaffer
Quotation: “Through acts of remembering, individuals and communities narrate alternative or counter-histories coming from the margins, voiced by other kinds of subjects — the tortured, the displaced and overlooked, the silenced and unacknowledged — among them. These counter-histories emerge in part out of the formerly untold tales of those who have not benefited: from the wealth, health, and future delivered to many others by the capital and technologies of modernity and postmodernity.” (4)
Quotation: “In all cases, storytelling functions as a crucial element in establishing new identities of longing (directed towards the past) and belonging (directed towards the future).”
Quotation: “Acts of personal narrating remain foundational to the expansion and proliferation of claims on behalf of human dignity, freedom, and justice.”
Urban Renewal
Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area pamphlet
On gentrification
Short interview re: Bronx Gentrification from BronxNet, August 2016
Gentrification keywords developed in Spring 2016
Gentrification keywords + definitions from spring 2017
Gentrification keywords + definitions developed in Spring 2018
On walking tours
This is a silly but informative excerpt!
A map of your sites, April 2018