David Thelen

Memory and American History

Introduction: Memory and American History David Thelen American History and the Structures of Collective Memory: A Modest Exercise In Empirical Iconography Michael Frisch OFor Something beyond the BattlefieldO: Frederick Douglass and the Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War David W. Blight Rescripting a Troubled Past: John BrownOs Family and the Harpers Ferry Conspiracy Robert E. McGlone Power and Memory in Oral History: Workers and Managers at Studebaker John Bodnar Remembering the Discovery of the Watergate Tapes Introduction David Thelen Watergate Reminiscences Donald G. Sanders Friday the Thirteeneth Scott Armstrong Conversations between Alexander P. Butterfield and David Thelen about the Discovery of the Watergate Tapes The Timless Past: Some Anglo-American Historical Preconceptions David Lowenthal Index

Of Audiences, Borderlands, and Comparisons: Toward the Internationalization of American History

The project of internationalizing the Journal of American History begins with the conviction that the history we write emerges from the ways we engage audiences. We frame our inquiries with an eye to the people we imagine will be interested in what we have to tell. What historians contribute is the ability to uncover and hold up pieces from the past as alternatives for their audiences to consider in the present -perhaps for action, perhaps for solace, perhaps even for identity. When anything interferes with the ability of historians and audiences to engage alternatives from the past, the conversations are weakened. In the United States today, that ability is weakened by the narrow and overspecialized vision of historians and by empty and stalled political debate that discourages people from imagining alternatives to the present. We hope that by drawing foreign scholars and their work into the everyday activities of theJAH, we can encourage exploration of alternatives to the narrowed academic conversations that shape our field and to the empty political debate that characterizes our American politics. Foreign scholars, who by definition introduce texts and events from one culture to audiences from another, develop two approaches that can widen our approaches to the American past. First, foreign audiences expect comparison: How does an American process, structure, method of interpretation, or style of problem solving resemble and differ from something in their own country? Second, the foreign audiences of Americanists abroad occupy borderlands in which scholars must translate: How do people use words, and ultimately create lives, out of materials from two or more cultures in the borderlands between those cultures?

The Practice of American History.

TheJournalofAmerican History is a place where Americanists gather to talk about how we want to practice American history. Our conversations usually take place about or through the products of our practice -articles, books, museum exhibitions, movies. We rarely step back and ask basic questions about why and how we do things, about the values and cultures we have created and embraced, about the company we are keeping and not keeping, about the institutions with which we have made peace. In this special issue we open a conversation about the practice of American history today, what our readers like and dislike about it. We begin the conversation by reporting what 1,047 JAH readers said in response to a survey and then deepen it by inviting twenty-nine practitioners to address issues raised by the readers and to share their experiences and perspectives on the practice of American history.

Historians and Archivists: A Rationale for Cooperation

InJuly 1992 a small team of historians and archivists gathered at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had assembled to review graduate history education. As the team considered practical questions about training history graduate students to do research, its members realized that recent developments have greatly complicated those questions. We recognized that major changes are taking place in both the historical and the archival professions. We believe the changes warrant a rethinking both of training for archival research and of the missions of the two professions and the connections between them. This article is based on the report of the team. It reviews the shared past of the two fields, the changes underway in each, and the ways historians and archivists have cooperated. It suggests ways they might renew cooperative efforts to advance their common interest in creating, preserving, and interpreting the documentary record. In recent decades a series of interrelated events has eroded our confidence in universal rules for preserving and telling stories about the past. No longer do people within the historical and archival professions agree that certain principles will ensure good history and good archival practices. Amid the disagreements and debates, both professions are reassessing their role in society. At a fundamental level, the issues and concerns challenging historians and archivists today appear to have many common characteristics. Both professions may therefore benefit from shared analyses of those challenges, and from common efforts to address them. There is a natural partnership between those who decide what evidence will be available and those who decide how to interpret it. We believe that the kind of history that historians now do would be enriched by renewing the partnership that once existed between historians and archivists. And we believe that the work of ar-

Mexico, the Puzzle: A Conversation about Civil Society and the Nation with Ilan Semo

ILAN SEMO: How does it look, the question of the nation today? When we ask, what is a nation, we ask a question that was asked by Ernest Renan after the Franco-Prussian War. As he saw that Lorraine no longer belonged to France, Renan asked what a nation is. He tried to define some properties. At first Renan thought that each nation was characterized by a language. He concluded that that was not true, of course; the United States has many languages; Belgium has two languages; the old Soviet Union and Spain each had many languages. So language has not very much to do with nations. Religion does not define a nation. Since it is so difficult to find common features that characterize a nation, Renan said that the way to find out whether a place was a nation was by referendum or plebiscite of all the people that are attached to that place. I think thats a good way to define the nation. Twenty years ago, people might have voted to define Yugoslavia as their nation, and now they might vote for Croatia. The Basques have voted almost to separate from Spain in the last elections, but without elections, they are part of Spain. Renan said that if we really try to analyze nations, we do not need legal definitions, economic definitions, but to find out what it means for a person to belong to the nation. Why do nations rise so quickly and then are destroyed so quickly? The Soviet Union looked like a nation, but then it was not a nation. People will tell us what they want a nation to mean at different times and places.

Democracy in Mexico-The Complex Roles of the United States: A Conversation with Sergio Aguayo

SERGIO AGUAYO: This is the tale of my schizophrenia. In different circles, I am frequently regarded either as a professor, an activist, or a columnist. On the one hand, I have now been a professor at El Colegio de Mexico for twenty-two years, engaged in the typical activities that characterize a professorial existence. On the other hand, I have also been active in the promotion of human rights and democracy in many different ways, and I have written a weekly column for fifteen years now. This is not a result of any conscious choice on my part; it simply happened, as a consequence of personal decisions, external events, and accidents. I was born in 1947, in a little town in the state of Jalisco and grew up there, in Guadalajara. As a youth-and a typical son of the Mexican Revolution-I believed in the regime, which seemed to promise both an education and hope for the future. This produced a well-developed sense of nationalism and a persistent distrust toward foreigners, especially those from the United States. Politics were a central interest from an early age; as a teenager, I joined a street gang committed to student activism.