Week Four

For Tuesday of this week, we were assigned readings that discussed how to ethically present exhibits containing knowledge that is difficult (usually emotionally) to process. I am not sure to what extent we will be dealing with difficult knowledge in our final projects, but nonetheless it is an appropriate and important lesson to learn as students of public history. There are five aspects of learner engagement with difficult knowledge that the article written by Julia Rose discusses. The “steps” in this nonlinear process, called the 5Rs,  are receive, resist, repeat, reflect, and reconsider. 

The first step “receive” occurs when a visitor arrives at the exhibit. He or she should be informed that the exhibit contains difficult knowledge so that he or she can enter with a sense of emotional preparedness. The second one, “resist,” references when a learner rejects the information that he or she is learning about. Difficult knowledge can be met with disbelief when it challenges the worldview of a learner or affects their sense of humanity. The third step, “repeat,” is when a learner goes back to information within the exhibit and rereads what he or she has just covered. It can also occur once the patron has left a museum when he or she does further independent reading and research of the topic. The fourth, “reflect,” occurs when curators provide an opportunity for learners to discuss difficult knowledge, ask questions that would further their understanding of the topic or give them space to process the knowledge. The final one, “reconsider,” is when learners begin to relate the difficult knowledge to other points in history or to experiences in their own life as well. 

On Thursday of this week, we went as a class to the archives in order to kick-start our final project research. Last time we visited the archives, the archivists warned us that doing research in the archives will always take us twice the time we think it will. After Thursday, I can definitely see how this will be true for the remainder of this process. I can foresee myself having a difficult time really narrowing down the scope of our project and honing in on particular documents due to the sheer quantity that is available for review. Hopefully with the guidance being in a group provides, it will become easier to focus on a smaller amount of boxes to look through. Although this will be a slow and tedious process, I am excited for all the little unexpected and interesting tidbits of history we will come across in our research.