{"id":30130,"date":"2011-03-02T08:14:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=30130"},"modified":"2023-11-05T21:08:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T02:08:32","slug":"it%e2%80%99s-all-in-the-historical-record-%e2%80%93-but-whose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/03\/it%e2%80%99s-all-in-the-historical-record-%e2%80%93-but-whose\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s All in the Historical Record \u2013 But Whose?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Alan<\/a>
Alan Marcus joins the bread line at the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., during a study trip last summer with 40 social studies teachers from Connecticut focusing on the Great Depression. Photo provided by the Neag School of Education<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Alan Marcus, history is all about point of view \u2013 whether it\u2019s told through film, historical monuments, or even textbooks. The trick for the discerning consumer is to question the perspective while giving it full value in the search for truth, says Marcus, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the Neag School of Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A former high school social studies teacher, Marcus says movies are among the most important influences shaping the popular view of history.<\/p>\n

He says when he runs teacher workshops and asks who has read Freedom From Fear<\/em>, a Pulitzer Prize-winning text on the Great Depression and World War II, he gets little response. Then he asks who has seen \u201cForrest Gump.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never done a workshop with teachers when every single hand didn\u2019t go up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Teaching History with Film<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marcus wrote about the phenomenon of learning history from film in his first book and edited volume, Celluloid Blackboard: Teaching History with Film <\/em>(Information Age Publishers, 2007),s a guide for scholars and teachers on how to use film to good effect in the classroom.<\/p>\n

His latest book, Teaching History with Film: Strategies for Secondary Social Studies <\/em>(Routledge, 2010), co-authored with colleagues from William & Mary, Penn State, and Pacific University, expands his theories about film and teaching history by using case studies.<\/p>\n

Most American movies about history are told from a white male perspective, but Marcus points to some significant exceptions. \u201cGlory\u201d was one of the first Civil War battle films about the African American experience. And \u201cIron-Jawed Angels,\u201d about the struggle for women\u2019s suffrage, is told from the perspective of women and shows aptly that not everyone was in agreement, he says.<\/p>\n

But good as it was, he says, \u201cIron-Jawed Angels\u201d had an underlying bias in favor of the constitutional amendment as opposed to a state-by-state decision on whether women should vote. The main characters, for example, were colorfully dressed and were portrayed as heroines, while the state-by-state advocates were clothed in drab colors.<\/p>\n

When he teaches what he calls \u201chistorical film literacy,\u201d he discusses how films tell stories through narrative and by allowing the viewer to visualize the past. While films may not corner the market on fact, he says, they can relay real information about social conscience, lifestyles, and popular thinking crucial to understanding the times.<\/p>\n

A Matter of Perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a high school teacher, Marcus was disturbed by how history was taught, and that experience set a course for a career-long passion for training teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not claim that social studies classes are the <\/em>most important, but I will say they are critical in helping students function in a society,\u201d he says. As an example, Marcus points to the British Petroleum oil spill, and the myriad perspectives from the company, the U.S. government, the local people, the media, the Coast Guard and, of course, those posted on the Internet. Once all that information is sifted, how does one act on it?<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is someone\u2019s perspective in history. Can we agree there was an American Revolution? Sure. \u2026 But who was the aggressor? Who was the victor,\u201d Marcus asks, citing the battle of Bunker Hill, where the British took the hill but the Americans showed they could fight. And, in discussing that seminal American conflict, even the terms \u201crebel\u201d and \u201cpatriot\u201d relay distinct points of view.<\/p>\n

In a May 2010 Social Education <\/em>article, \u201cRemember The Alamo? Learning History with Monuments and Memorials,\u201d co-authored with UConn colleague Tom Levine, an assistant professor curriculum and instruction, Marcus cites the role played by the Texas Board of Education in rewriting curriculum that affects not just that state but most others, because of its influence on the national textbook industry. The conservative board dropped Thomas Jefferson as a shaper of revolutionary philosophy because he was not sufficiently religious, but included former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as an important voice of the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas has a very big impact on the textbook industries,\u201d Marcus says. \u201cPublishers match books to Texas curriculum, and smaller states like Connecticut are sort of stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deconstructing Historical Sites<\/strong><\/p>\n

His recent work has centered on how people consume history through museums and historical sites, without spotting the same subjectivity they might notice in other renditions of history. The granite structures, printed placards, and use of expert curators mask the fact that museum storytelling is also a matter of choosing which stories to tell and how.<\/p>\n

This realization has spurred Marcus to work on a new book with the working title Teaching History with Museums<\/em>, which he is writing with Jeremy Stoddard at William & Mary and Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian and associate professor of history at UConn. The book, which will be published in 2012 by Routledge, will guide educators on the use of museum displays, monuments, historical sites, and living history facilities.<\/p>\n

Marcus and Woodward also collaborate as part of a Teaching American History Grant<\/a>, run by the Capitol Region Education Council, which provides professional development to 70 middle and high school social studies teachers.<\/p>\n

And new on the block, Marcus has developed a World War II course that will lead pre-service teachers to historical sites in Europe, including the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, this summer. Films such as \u201cThe Longest Day,\u201d \u201cSchindler\u2019s List,\u201d and \u201cSaving Private Ryan\u201d will be incorporated, as will Elie Wiesel\u2019s Night; History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, <\/em>by Deborah E. Lipstadt; and other readings. The course will conclude the following fall semester.<\/p>\n

Marcus discusses popular living-history museums, such as Plimoth Plantation, where he was a project evaluator, and Old Sturbridge Village, where he often takes his children. At Plimoth, a Wampanoag village was added more than a decade ago to enhance the understanding of visitors, who experience it first on the way to the white settlement. At Sturbridge, a reconstructed 19th-century village of buildings from throughout New England, docents represent a period and demonstrate early American lifestyle but are not role-playing in strict character. It\u2019s an effective approach to learning history, he says.<\/p>\n

Some tourist draws, however, sacrifice authenticity to commercialism, as does Colonial Williamsburg in its use of non-period Christmas celebrations, Marcus writes in The Social Studies<\/em> in 2007. \u201cOn a very basic level, I think students and teachers sort of see museums as a day off. I try to frame it as a rigorous intellectual activity. It doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t be fun,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it\u2019s not a day off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Developing a Healthy Skepticism<\/strong><\/p>\n

At UConn, Marcus advises pre-service secondary social studies teachers and teaches social studies methods and seminars, \u201cEducation and Popular Culture,\u201d \u201cCurrent Issues in Social Studies\/History Education.\u201d He has also co-taught \u201cTeaching History Through Fiction and Film\u201d and \u201cThe Historian\u2019s Craft, Teaching Focus\u201d with history department faculty. He recently served as co-guest editor-in-chief of Film & History, <\/em>and president of the Connecticut Council for the Social Studies.<\/p>\n

Although Marcus has developed curriculum, where history\u2019s concerned, he sees his teaching mission as equipping the lifetime learner with a healthy skepticism. \u201cI\u2019m not here to make decisions about what sort of facts they should know,\u201d he says, \u201cbut to equip them with the skills to make their own judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodward, the state historian, places Marcus in his own historical context: \u201cMuch of the way people learn in the 21st century will come in \u2018YouTube to iPad\u2019 format \u2013 from a streaming website to a personal tablet of some kind. Alan is making sure his student-teachers have the skill to teach critical analysis within this new epistemological framework.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Education professor Alan Marcus teaches students a healthy skepticism about historical sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-30130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 21:28:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30130"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206557,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30130\/revisions\/206557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30130"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=30130"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}