Last but not least….

My name is Sara McIntee and I am the final intern for this experimental project at the University of North Dakota.  I was born and raised in North Dakota and love everything the state has to offer, hands down.  The “prairie” is my life.  Although, North Dakota is not the flat state you think it to be.  Look at a topographical map.  Trust me.  We have hills. 

I am a MA candidate at UND with a major in history. This is my first semester as a graduate student, so I feel I am tripping my way through the month of January.

I consider myself different from the rest of the graduate students in the history department because my goals as a MA candidate are different.  I’m not looking to teach and I’m not looking to do research.  I am concentrating on Public History.

For the past few years I’ve worked at the local historical society archiving artifacts and spreading the good news of the historical world to the public in a language they speak- simple and entertaining.  While some graduate students get a high off the latest WWII book or writing a 50+ page paper, I prefer to get my kicks giving a tour and writing a artifact-acceptance receipt for a 100+ year picture of Grand Forks.  Historical interpretation is important, but I sometimes think the scholars (and grad students) of the world forget the pictures, letters, documents, and artifacts need to be cared for and who takes care of it so they can view it for years to come.  Theories and stories can only go so far- artifacts are what keep history alive.

I hope I can gain more experience with working with a team of “archivists” as in the historical society I am the only one.  I hope this blog will also reach aspiring historians all over the world- young and old, professional and amateur- and let them in on the unseen behind-the-scenes of a working museum.

And don’t be shy to comment!  We would love to answer questions or just engage in conversations about history, our museum, Pyla-Koutsopetria, North Dakota….or anything else that strikes your fancy!

Sara McIntee

“Outer” Spaces?

I’ve been asked to introduce myself.  I have no idea how to take 46 years and amalgamate them into something meaningful in a venue demanding brevity.  I’m practicing to be an historian, after all, and brevity is not central to that profession.

I didn’t start out as an historian.  I started out as an anthropologist.  That isn’t exactly true.  I, like you, started out as a child.  My upbringing had too much of an impression on my future career path for me to ignore it in this, my truncated autobiography.  It also helps to set up how my introduction ties into a blog about history interns and on-line museums, so I am compelled to mention it.  Intrigued yet?  Read on.

I grew up around scientists, test pilots, and astronauts.  That was my dad’s field, so that’s what I knew.  I not only watched the first, and subsequent, moon landings and jaunts into outer space, but was also privy to the preparation that took place to make them happen.  “Journeys.”  “Outer” space.  Important words that shaped my destiny.

I love journeys, trips, pilgrimages.  I love to seek out a destination, research it, and make preparations to travel to it by whatever means is available.  I care that I go through the process and arrive at my destination.  I care that, upon arrival, there is much to learn and explore.  In that vein, anthropology suited me.  It still does.

I was the director of a small but regionally significant museum for a short time early in my career.  I loved being the director of a destination, of my own little moon, if you will.  I worked hard to entice people to come, and they did.  I also loved the tangible, creative process of setting up displays to convey that bit of history that would most intrigue and inform the visitors.  They travelled from their world to mine.  My daily space was their “outer” space.  They explored and made discoveries.  The work was immensely satisfying.

This worldview makes it difficult for me to imagine a destination without envisioning the preparations and travel that take me there.  They are all integral to the whole.  I have as much difficulty creating a mental picture of a museum without walls.  Yet as a master’s level graduate student in history, I have been tasked to help create such a “space.”  My initial reaction is to ask whether this is possible.  Continuing with the cosmic metaphor, I feel that I have been asked to find a way to bring the moon to the earth.  If I am able, won’t those visiting have lost something without completing the journey that “should have” taken them there?

I found the beginnings of my answer in a speech given by John F. Kennedy to a university crowd in Houston on the 12 of September, 1962.  He said, “…all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and…must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”  Creating an on-line art exhibit, a museum, and a blog, represents a new age of exploration for me, one that turns from the “outer” spaces of my world and life to the “inner” spaces of my computer and mind.  This journey is already creating difficulties as I move from macro to micro measurements, from hectares to gigabytes, from buildings to computers.

Computers move too quickly for me, so I will have to adjust my steps to keep up.  Sentiments concerning the speed at which change occurs are not unprecedented.  Kennedy, in the same speech, stated, “This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers.”  Laptops, in 1962?  No, Kennedy was referring to space travel.  He continued, “Surely the opening of vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.”  Kennedy was in the first stages of a pilgrimage.  His speech revealed that he had chosen a destination:  the moon.

I, too, have a new destination in mind.  It does not hang over the earth, caught in orbit, however.  It quite literally exists in my own, and my peers’, minds at present.  We will delve into the microcosm of cyberspace and experiment with its matter in an attempt to create a place that you find enticing.  I hope that asking you to accompany me on this trek will satisfy your need for exploration and discovery in the same way it does mine.  I am compelled to embark on this adventure for the same reasons that Kennedy urged the nation to go to the moon.  He said, “We choose to go to the moon…not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, …one we are unwilling to postpone….”  So let us begin.

Kathryn A. H. Nedegaard

Who let this guy in?

My name is Christopher Gust and I’m one of three interns collaborating on the projects to be discussed in this blog. I am a MA candidate at the University of North Dakota, majoring in history and minoring in English. I am an aspiring medievalist and cultural historian with a long-time fascination with archaeology and material culture studies. I spent the summer of 2004 at various Pre-Columbian/Pre-Contact sites throughout North Dakota and, in 2008, I accepted Dr. Caraher’s invitation to join the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in the Republic of Cyprus/Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area. Now, as I complete my thesis concerning medieval ghost folklore and the dialogic aspects of sermon exempla under the guidance of Drs. Broedel, Caraher, Sauer and Beard, I look forward to engaging the material which Dr. Caraher has provided our “public history” team this semester. Considering that some of these projects will continue for multiple semesters in the hands of other students, I also look forward to laying both a substantive foundation in terms of quality and quantity as well as a legacy of daring creativity and avant-garde conceptualization for those who will come after. In our own, small way, I see this team as participating in a larger movement of pioneers moving into the foggy, increasingly complicated and frequently alarming future of the present disciplines of history and archaeology. One thing is certain, and that is that our disciplines will not be static, just as they have not been static in the past. The key lies in anticipating change and learning not only to adapt to it for the sake of our own paid employment, but to thrive amid it to the edification of our fellow humans.

That’ll do for now. I look forward to meeting our readers over the course of this semester through our communication on this blog, and I hope that you get to know me a little better with every new post.

Until next time,

Christopher Shaw Gust