In the Fall 1985 issue of the OAH Magazine of History, Anne Firor Scott expressed her desire for students to “learn that what we call ‘history’ is the past experience of real people,” that is, to connect the past with the present. Scott posed a central question: What is it we hope the study of history will do for students? One answer is that, in connecting past and present through the study of history, students must think through their relation to it, and this process contributes to improved critical thinking. Because learning occurs when students make connections, our multimedia project (in progress), “Lived History,” presents history through literary and contextual materials we hope will inspire students to make both critical and personal connections. The program is user-friendly for teachers and students, requiring only computers with CD-ROM drives and optional Internet connections. We are aiming this project at secondary school and college students of American history and culture; our hope is to produce a historical narrative through the intersection of literary texts with cultural contexts, thereby facilitating and enriching teachers’ approach to the subject.

Lived History

Antebellum Boston was a hub of intellectual and artistic activity, making it an ideal destination for students studying American history, literature, and culture. The “Lived History” CD-ROM and web site invite students and teachers to explore a time and place central to the development of American thought and identity through consideration of two works that reveal contemporary life in the 1850s: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Margaret Fuller’s feminist treatise, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). The selections we have chosen from these complementary works provide an imaginatively “living” vision of this vibrant moment in American history (1). These selections contain hypertext links to visual and textual illustrations (2) on the CD-ROM, which is supplemented by the optional web site.

The project allows students to investigate a compilation of primary source material such as personal correspondence, newspaper and magazine articles, literature, political cartoons, and information on commerce and culture. Thus, a student reading a passage from Hawthorne’s novel may become interested in the hero’s profession, an early type of photography. By clicking on the word “daguerreotype” in the passage, she can view briefly, or in greater detail, informational screens on daguerreotypes, the photographic process they entail, and the visual effects of the finished product. Similarly, a student may want to view pages from some of the magazines Fuller refers to in her discussion of women’s social identity or illustrations of contemporary landmarks in Salem and Boston.

Our premise is that in the intersection of fiction and nonfiction lies the historical moment of 1850s Boston, and this history is made more accessible from the cultural artifacts both authors use to compose their pictures of the period. Students chart their own journey through literary and cultural texts, choosing links to follow at their own rate and in their own sequence. Students’ exploration of these materials will help them see the past as it was experienced by real people, and thus engage in the kind of learning Scott views as the fundamental work of history studies.

We selected Hawthorne and Fuller as complementary focal figures for this project because they offer visions that are both unique and representative of the period. Hawthorne’s novel of contemporary values and social relations, The House of the Seven Gables, provides a fascinating glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century life in the Northeast. Margaret Fuller’s analysis of women’s social condition in the same time frame offers a comparison to Hawthorne’s depiction of female characters and the life options available to them (spinsterhood versus marriage, leisure versus work).

As a work of nonfiction, Fuller’s treatise also provides a useful historical balance to Hawthorne’s fictional world, particularly in her discussion of the kind of (limited) professional work available to women versus Hawthorne’s novel, in which women’s only real option is selling small objects or baked goods from a “penny shop” in their home. Biographical information on these authors and those of their circle, correspondence, and other materials related to their lives additionally help contextualize what students learn from comparing sections of the two works. Our most important goal is for students to explore the historical moment of the 1850s imaginatively and to create “lived history” by making it their own.

Although Fuller and Hawthorne were intellectual contemporaries, differences of gender, locale, philosophy, and genre help students see a more complex picture of the times. Hawthorne’s novel deals with the tensions of small communities and the effect of economic vicissitudes on family life, while Fuller writes in the midst of big city life about women as individuals. Our project draws out these differences as well as the similarities in the two works. Biographical information becomes pertinent when students learn that the two authors were connected through their individual acquaintances with the Peabody sisters (Hawthorne married one sister; Fuller’s career was promoted by another), and through the transcendental circle organized by Bronson Alcott. These relationships provide contextual information that enhances students’ appreciation of the time period and allows teachers to illustrate the historical and cultural relations between texts and the times they represent. Students can further enhance their sense of history by viewing monuments important to these writers (such as Boston’s Corner Bookstore and the Salem Customs House) from both nineteenth-century illustrations and modern snapshots.

How the Project Works

We will use the CD-ROM component to organize materials through links viewers can access in different orders and for different purposes. In letting students navigate these links at their own speed and choice, we allow them to make their own discoveries. In the same way, extratextual connections are also available, such as contemporary articles in the Atlantic Monthly that reveal readers’ interest in writers of the time and include excerpts from Hawthorne’s “Note-Books”; passages from books of social conduct for young women that supply a comparison to Fuller’s exhortations to women to pursue their own talents and abilities; and Fuller’s letters, which show students just how limited women’s choices and expectations were.

These links, which students choose individually, form pathways through the material that allow students to construct their own conception of the period in terms of both its tangible and philosophical character. Students make choices among the available materials, organizing them toward their own needs and understanding them according to their own connections. However, materials are also available from the main table of contents, and any one topic or object can serve as the starting point for an individual pathway.

Teachers may prefer to use “Lived History” in a more directed way, particularly if fitting it into the often tight schedule of an American history survey course. Because the project’s main asset is its array of related materials, an initial period of student exploration can be followed by class discussion on what life was like in the early 1850s according to Hawthorne and then Fuller. That discussion and further exploration could be geared to the topics most relevant to the students’ study of the antebellum period, including issues of family economy and work, the impact of new technologies, and the ideology of romantic individualism. For instance, Hawthorne applauds the victory of the new professional man over old wealth in his novel, but he is clearly still nostalgic for the surviving historical presence of that old wealth. Today, we experience the same ambivalence toward old and new class relations, visiting the mansions of previous generations to see how the wealthy lived while being glad that society is no longer structured on aristocratic lines. Class discussion could also center on the few career options Fuller is able to propose for women, how these resemble today’s choices, and how her description of them fits today’s comparable jobs.

After students complete their exploration of the materials, either in a self-directed or teacher-directed format, they should be asked to connect this information with interactive tasks assigned by the teacher. For instance, students could write an article in the style of the 1850s for the Atlantic Monthly on photography as a profession, or write a series of letters from Margaret Fuller to Hawthorne’s wife giving her advice, or compose journal entries by the Peabody sisters.

The web site for “Lived History” will be linked to relevant Internet resources that will assist students working on these tasks. The project web site will contain updates on new sites as they appear, so that students with Internet access will have additional materials for their historical research and connection-making.

The organizational format we have chosen provokes relational and associative thinking in order to strengthen students’ ability to generalize from individual objects. Our student-centered, discovery-based approach is geared toward teachers seeking support for traditional as well as new pedagogies, and will assist students’ development of higher order thinking skills. The CD-ROM will be accompanied by content-specific curricular support for teachers and information essential for proper classroom implementation of instructional technology.

Conclusion

“Lived History” is still a work in progress. As we add primary and contextual resources to it, we are continually considering our relation to the materials so that we may remain sensitive to teacher and student needs and interests. We have tested a modified version of the project at the college level and are conducting tests at the high school level during the 1998-99 academic year. A working version of the web site is available at <http://omega.cc.umb.edu/ ~hatmaker/livedhistory>. We will be continually updating the web site component through the fall of 2001. For more information on the project, please contact Wayne Hatmaker at Wayne.Hatmaker@umb.edu or at (781) 585-4313.

Endnotes

1. The CD-ROM will include two chapters of The House of the Seven Gables (Chapter 3, “The First Customer,” and Chapter 12, “The Daguerreotypist”) and selections (pages 3-4; 14-20; and 105-13) from Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Other Writings, ed. Donna Dickenson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

2. Hypertext is the format in which the user views additional information about a topic by selecting a link on that topic.

Suggested Resources

For teachers interested in extending the use of this project, we include several current web sites that discuss or offer resources for teaching the humanities with technology.

Connections: Scholarship on Hypertext and Computer-Assisted Pedagogy: <http://ajax.abacon.com/ connections/resources/scholarship.html>.

Godwin-Jones, Bob. “Emerging Technologies: Dynamic Web Page Creation.” Language Learning and Technology, vol. 1, no. 2 (January 1998): 7-13, <http://polyglot.cal.msu.edu/llt/vol1num2/emerging/default.html>.

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), vol. 1, no. 2 (August 1997): <http://www.aln.org/ alnweb/magazine/maga_issue2.htm>.

Live Text Institute for Learning Technologies: <http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/ k12/livetext-nf/webcurr.html>.

Pedagogy for Web-based Education: <http://webclass.cqu.edu.au/ Resources/Pedagogy/index.txt.html>.

Elizabeth Fay is an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Wayne Hatmaker is technical director for the Silver Lake Regional School District in Kingston, Massachusetts