#public historian

[culpepers-wife]

Spent the day in the archives learning how to deal with materials and records

[lgbtq-history-museum-cfl-intern]

New Internship, New Blog

Hello Internet World!

My name is Marena 😊

 I’m a senior in the Interdisciplinary Studies Undergraduate Program at the University of Central Florida (UCF), minoring in History, Latin American Studies, and Spanish.

I’m back to take you all through my latest internship journey with the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida (see link below)😊

Last year, for my previous internship blog (see link below), I was working as a research assistant and married to the idea of becoming a university professor.

However, due to a sudden decline in my health in late Spring of this year, (from health complications due to exacerbated pre-existing conditions from burnout), I had to reconsider my career path, this time truly considering my capacities and limitations, lifestyle, and passions, with my career interests.

As a student living with many health conditions, I had to learn to prioritize and accommodate those needs, including how I could remain in the realm of public learning spaces.

 I thought back to my time interning at the Orange County Regional History Center (OCRHC) in Downtown Orlando and the awesome experience of working with the collections department that summer. Since then, I’ve always said I want more working experience with museum collections, but I concluded, “Instead of it being a stepping stone toward a professorship in history, why not make it the destination?”

And that is how I came to embrace a career in …well… something in museum collections?

…or more broadly speaking, Public History, and I’ll explain why that distinction is important to me for now.

This brings me to my current internship with the LGBTQ History Museum!

This experience will be unique because although I’ve had an internship with a museum before, this is a virtual museum! However, they were recently provided a humble space for live exhibits at a local LGBTQIA+ community resource center, The Center, at their Orlando location.

I will be working with new (for me) digital tools and formats to research, design, and create their next exhibit. I’m not really sure how much I’m allowed to share about it right now about the upcoming exhibit but their current exhibit, Central Florida and the 1980s AIDS Crisis: A History, came together over about a year to a year and a half as one idea became a paper which became a blog post and evolved into their debut live exhibit.

I learned this from one of the Board members I met when I visited the exhibit on its opening night. Those who attended were so friendly and welcoming. I look forward to collaborating with them this semester after meeting them, getting a feel for their dynamic, and seeing the work they put together. I know I will learn a lot from their mentorship and experience as we organize the next one!

Since I’m planning to graduate this December, I chose this internship to prepare me for a career in Public History with experience in the growing integration of digital tools and spaces in the field, as well as working on a collaborative project. I hope to take these skills with me into graduate school and my career.

While my research interests have not shifted, my approach has, and the project itself has taken a backseat until I can pursue it again, perhaps for a master’s thesis or a doctoral research project.

As a Public Historian, I’m still invested in the stories of local Puerto Rican women like me, and I want to contribute to collecting these stories. However, I also want to advocate for expanding the availability of other diverse local histories through my work in collections, archiving, oral history, or wherever Public History takes me.

The specificity of Public History is significant because, though I have a narrow idea of what I can do with the title and what sort of work is available, Public History is so much more than exhibits and museums.

It’s making knowledge and learning relevant and readily accessible to the community from designating/protecting local historical landmarks to speaking to local leaders on podcast episodes, to tackling local topics in a film documentary, or even documenting your journey and experience on a public forum such as Tumblr!

With that said, one of my internship requirements is to record my experiences through this blog, and this time I hope to experiment with posting audio files instead of written posts to try and familiarize myself with different tools and formats!

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you stick around for the next few months 😊

Relevant Links:

The first will take you to the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida's Website!

The second is a link to my previous internship blog which covers some of my experience then as well as some research topics of interest that came up that semester!

[chronotopes]

I love you public history people I love you museum people I love you archivists and I LOVE YOU architectural historians!!!

[museeeuuuum]

New video! Ridley Scott has been talking shit about historians. Here is my response.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 4 thoughts

i thought this episode sounded interesting! the plot was kinda: wasn't it fucked up when the vietnam war happened? and i was sitting here like, yeah, quite famously it was pretty fucked up. still, an interesting exploration into trauma and the american role of imperialism

the first thing i wrote was "a lot of people in this show fall asleep watching the tv but personally i have never done that". am i immune to the Curse or something?

so this guy who is a sleep doctor sees a fire and he calls the fire department right away, and everyone is evacuating, and we see a dude in the hallway with a suspicious smile and an even more suspicious scar across his neck. i am used to the episode structure by now, so i knew this was our mystery man of the week.

but the firemen get to the burning fellow's house and there is no fire! despite it looking so real to him that he actually burned to death... it's not there! well huh! must be our mystery man can psychically project fire

cutscene to mulder's place and it again looks like an entirely new set for his apartment. again, i ask, i'm not crazy, right?? can someone else confirm that this is an entirely different space than what we saw before?

(i hope we don't see scully in a new space as well- i thought her apartment was so cute in s1)

he gets a newspaper and a tape of the call dropped off at his door so he runs to skinner and begs with his big sad wet eyes to please let him take the case. and skinner is like maybe. but go transcribe a bunch of wiretaps first. so THAT is why he's always listening to weird stuff!

BUT WAIT! who enters our fair scene...? but a NEW CHARACTER? he is a guy who looks like he crawled out of a frat house where he majored in lacrosse and business... he introduces himself as alex and says that this is HIS case... mulder is PISSED he's all "i work alone >:(" but he can't shake the dude off... hmm.

(i recall seeing a post about people slash shipping mulder with a character in s2- i saw this post way before i started watching the show, so i only noted it in my passing interest of fandom history- and i'm wondering if this is the fellow they were referring to. in the same post i saw mulder in a speedo which i guess we'll get to in time)

scully's back at the academy!!! teaching another autopsy class! boy they must have a steady stream of bodies coming in for this. but an urgent call is coming from a "george hale" and she leaves class to go answer...

and it's mulder!!!!! he has a code name!!! he asks her to fly up to new york and do an autopsy and she's like "i'm in class til 4:30" and he's like "that's fine, we'll wrap it up for you and you can come up at 5!" and she sighs and. agrees.

now. again. this was shocking to me. mulder cannot have anyone else draw his blood or do an autopsy it HAS to be his friend scully. and she WILL get on a flight and do it. this is SICK and TWISTED how she will do anything for him.

mulder was being a real jerk to alex and alex said "i don't appreciate being ditched like a bad date" and to my shock and dismay i found myself agreeing with this new character... mulder WAS being unreasonable... i mean we knew he's been moody lately but this was downright hostile

(mulder walks in while scully puts an organ into a scale) "spleen or pancreas?" "stomach" <- LMAO his ass did NOT pass anatomy!

and they're all so smiley and happy to see each other when. scully sees this man behind him. and her smile fades SO fast.

(he tries to shake her hand but given that her hands are covered in stomach she wisely brushes him by. it may have seemed like a diss but i assume he doesn't want gore on his hands)

alex is GAGGING over the body (me too) so mulder gets realllllll close to scully to block out his amateur hour buffoonery...

(y'all need to not be that close and looking at each other in such a manner in front of a dead guy... or do it more for my sake)

she's whispering that it seems his body believed he burned to death despite there being no burns on him!

we see another guy with a same scar on his neck as the first!!! he knows the first guy and it seems initially that their reunion is wholesome... until preacher (scar man one) admits to killing the sleep doctor... and then things get... wild

"holy fuck", i mumbled to myself while also writing down the same phrase in my notes, as a blood soaked family appeared in the room, shooting the character we just met for his crimes. that escalated with an extreme quickness. it was clear that whatever traumas he had inflicted upon others in vietnam were being returned in equal measure via the psychic force of this preacher character

then we go back to mulder and alex, who i thought was handling mulder's hater energy quite well, all things considered. but little did i know what was to come...

so sleep doctor, the guy who just died, and preacher all knew each other... interesting... they were stationed at basic training together...

we get a visual on mulder's new source after deep throat's passing! he says he has no desire to be there, and that their mutual friend deep throat died for what he believed in, which he does not want to do. which is of course totally fair. at the end of the day the FBI is just a paycheck for some of these folks.

the sleep doctor was revealed to be doing experiments to make super advanced soldiers who don't need sleep so maybe that gives you the power to kill people magically. we can't really rule it out.

preacher then makes two cops kill EACH OTHER with his sorcery

back to scully cam <3 she's got her glasses on at the computer <3 she's got little yellow earrings in that look like flowers <3 and she thinks its so cool that they cut part of this guy's brain out and now he hasn't slept in 24 years... nerd

they're on the phone with each other and it is SO SAD because why. why can't they just be together! it's not fair. she says it sounds like his new partner is working out and he's like yeah he's okay...

"must be nice to not have someone poking holes in all your theories" "yeah, no idea how i put up with you for so long" and they're smiling into the phone while saying this

now, i won't lie. this scene, of all the scenes, was the first to bring tears to my eyes in the course of my streaming this show. because now we have seen what they'll do for each other and they're TAUNTING me by dangling it in front of my face. and i cannot stand it. i feel sick at the thought.

anyway back to mulder and his new partner. who i feel is too good to be true because he's willing to believe spooky mulder's theories. but they found another guy who also had the sleep surgery and he tells them that they went on a rampage committing atrocities in vietnam which was. very heavy for the alien show. but it is something that americans often pretend just didn't happen so i thought it was interesting that the idea of accountability was being explored in fiction.

so there's one more guy involved with the sleep surgery, and he's coming into town, so alex and mulder have to sprint down to the station and try and find him. they're really giving it a sprint, too. mulder is a track star. don't think i've forgotten

and mulder does see the guy they're looking for but preacher is behind him and shoots mulder! he falls to the ground! no, i yelled to my screen! not another bullet in mulder!

... but he gets up. the whole thing was a trick of preacher! it never actually happened!

alex is like dude wtf. and this is where he says "i want to believe" and this where i made the very astute note "i don't trust this guy, sorry"

so finally they find preacher still alive, and mulder tells alex to help out his victim, while mulder runs off to find him. mulder sees how much pain he is in, and tells him that maybe his pain can lessen if he testifies about what was done to him, and it seems they've come to an understanding...

until alex enters, pulls his gun up, so preacher also pulls his gun up, and alex and shoots him! preacher is dead

mulder looks deeply upset by this. he tells alex that he did the right thing, but you can tell he doesn't believe it in the slightest. i would venture to guess that this is when all the trust he had begun to place in alex vanishes. he seems entirely deflated at the unnecessary loss of life.

he goes back to the car and notices someone stole the secret files that his informant gave him, and he punches the car. this is simply too many L's for one day, and i sympathize.

but scully's freaking out too, because her office was broken into and all her stuff looked through! so what in the name of hell is going on here?!?!? ah, i realize, it is this alex fool... "i know ur related somehow" i wrote ominously in my quotes

and boy, i was right! the narrative the writers were going for was not lost on me! because remember skinner's old sidekick the cigarette guy? and how they had a sort of breakup moment? well, alex is reporting to him, and they have the file he stole from mulder!!!!!

alex says that scully is a "big problem" to which i say: keep talking like that, you overgrown varsity jock, and you're gonna have a big problem with my fucking hands catching your throat

anyway, interesting episode. i didn't want to like alex and then i did because i felt bad for him for being subjected to mulder's attitude and then i hated his guts by the end and reluctantly admitted to myself that mulder's crankiness was justified. i hope he won't stick around for long but i have a feeling he will.

also, they need to stop taunting me by dangling a real mulder and scully reunion in front of my head and then ripping it away. i had TEARS! in my eyeballs! i was sighing wistfully! it was sick!!!!!! this is my free time i'm spending here pining after these fools! it's me, the fan, asking for fan service!!!

[wonder-worker]

Angelberga was a peculiarly prominent personality in manifold aspects of European politics [in the late 9th century. Born to the Supponid family of Italy, she married Emperor Louis II and had several opportunities to establish her position as an active and controversial player in the vicissitudes of her husband's reign]. She acted as Louis's regent, accompanied him on expansionary military campaigns in the south of the peninsula and represented him at [congresses, tribunals, and diplomatic negotiations]. Strikingly, she was also the beneficiary of a spectacular collection of charters. Almost one in seven of Louis II’s extant charters were issued in her favour. Angelberga’s conspicuous exploits in the field of charter acquisition did not diminish after the emperor’s death, and this helped her to maintain a position as a key power-broker in Italian politics, control of land [particularly monastic foundations] being a fundamental building-block of power in this period. In the interregnum following 875, during which Charles the Bald of West Francia and Karlmann of Bavaria fought to claim the succession to the heirless Louis, Angelberga herself conducted the negotiations and decided the loyalty of a major sector of the Lombard political community. She maintained this high profile until her death [having supported her son-in-law Boso's quest for power, endured a temporary exile, maintained the support of Pope John VIII, and founded the monastery of San Sisto in the city of Piacenza, where she probably ended her days sometime before 891].

-Simon MacLean, "Queenship, nunneries and royal widowhood in Carolingian Europe"

[sillycourtjester]

I want to be so many things at once like i want to be a historian and an author and an artist and a poet and a journalist and an activist and a psychologist and instead i'm in the fucking american public high school system

[archivlibrarianist]

From the article:

"People in Halifax were able to digitize their historical photographs on Sunday and share them publicly as part of an initiative by the Halifax municipal archives.

"The archives held a Scan-a-thon at the Halifax Central Library for members of the public to bring in treasured photographs, slides and negatives that showed local history.

"Municipal archivist Susan McClure said the archives are looking for any historical photos, including neighbourhoods, construction projects and pictures connected to the railway."

[focsle]

My mind turns so often to these whalemen that I get attached to. It really does live in me.

It feels a bit odd to care so much and want to extend so much kindness to strangers who’ve been dead for 160-80 years but. I really care. I get to know parts of them. I identify with parts of them. Such an itch I can’t scratch, that I get to know them and can’t talk to them. People talk about their ancestors this way, sometimes. These aren’t my ancestors, at least not by blood, not by family history. I joke about how my ancestry dot com search history is just a New Bedford lodging house because it’s all 20-somethings men born c.1815-1840. But they DO feel like a strange sort of family to me.

I once spent an entire morning talking to a whaleman’s gravestone…or rather, the stone of his family since he was lost somewhere in the Pacific. It’s imperfect, but I make a point to visit him on occasion because he feels like a friend at this point. I bring him books he wanted to read but never got to. I tell his mother about him, that he thought about her. I tell him what parts of the city are still here that he remembers, that he expected would be torn down some day. I stand where his house used to be sometimes and glance at the park, knowing it was the same vantage point he had when he was 15. If I lived nearer to most of these lads I’d visit all of them.

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[a-drama-addict]

actually one more sigrid thought my favourite thing was at the epilogue party when she talked to halsin and it was like “Well avernus kind of blows but i have karlach. her laugh is so beautiful it could part clouds”

and then halsin just goes “i’m so glad you guys have an enduring friendship :)”

[culpepers-wife]

October reading list

[pandalilysbox]

ahhhhhh I got a position in my schools history society committee!!! i had to do a speech and was so nervous but clearly they liked it bc I got voted 🤭😅 I also got a position in their monthly history journal!

EEEE so proud of u!!! it’s bc i voted for u in spirit 😌 trust

yessss tho look at u climbing the ladder freshman year <33

[theragamuffininitiative]

Ah, for the people who have blocked me bc I am simply (and reasonably) asking for proof of the validity of wildly circulated misinformation based on nothing but hearsay that is actively damaging hurricane relief efforts, and stirring even greater division among our fellow citizens:

I sincerely hope you have done so for reasons of not discoursing on the internet with a stranger in a way that for you is detrimental to your mental health, and not bc you refuse to acknowledge and discuss the possibility that you might be wrong.

One thing is very healthy, the other is very dangerous and sad.

[what-life-is-really-like]

What I imagine English grad majors do: *read classics, debate philosophy, live out their dark academia dreams*

What I do as a public history grad student: *Crtl + F a section of The Twelve Caesars to see how many times Suetonius uses some variation of 'it is said' as a source*

[chickenofliterature]

any time someone asks me my research area I have an identity crisis