“The aim here is not to separate fact from fantasy but to show how each embodies a distinct class of knowledge and how one is deeply implicated in the other.” HistoryFantasyMeaningAccuracyStar TrekPopular SciencePublic History Author:Constance Penley
“In general the assumption of all of us, child or adult, was that this was a new country and that a new country had no history. History was something that applied to other places.” MemoryLocal HistoryPublic History Book:Wolf Willow Source: Wolf Willow
“...you sometimes note an impatience on the part of a specialist that the public does not show sufficient interest in his assemblage of information as such. He is likely to conclude that the average person is somewhat stupid. The opposite is true. It is a sign of native intelligence on the part of any person not to clutter his mind with indigestibles.” HistoryIntelligenceAcademiaPublic History Author:Freeman Tilden
“Though necessary to the work of uncovering the past, archives are nevertheless limited and misleading storehouses of information. While at times imposing and formal enough as to seem all-encompassing in their brick, glass, and steel structures, archives only include records that survived accident, were viewed as important in their time or in some subsequent period, and were deemed worthy of preservation. These records were originally created by fallible people like you and me, who could err in their jottings, hold vexed feelings they sometimes transmitted onto the page, or consciously or unconsciously misconstrue events they witnessed. Even in their most organized form, archived records are mere scraps of accounts of previous happenings, "rags of realities" that we painstakingly stick together in order to picture past societies.” HistoryArchivesPublic History Book:All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake Source: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake