Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
691-700 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
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691) Although I agree that certain parts of events are more prevalent in our memories than others, the question is why. Why do people remember specific things more vividly than others? I flip-flopped back and forth with my own thoughts trying to take one side and explain why this choosing occurs. I was unable to reach a conclusion, however, because I can see how this choosing can sometimes be deliberate but other times intuitive. (Sarah Ballan, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2964]
692) Oppositional or dialogical history challenges conventional . . . history by questioning both the relative value of what is examined and the implicit values of the examiner. It sees the very processes and ambitions of historiography as products of much larger forces and it seeks to understand the relationships between those present forces and the hierarchical imperative of the past. . . . Dialogical history gives us a choice of pasts, too. But that very choice or pluralism is subversive since it implies that . . . [history] is not simply inherited but constructed, and constructed according to the . . . categories we devise. (Cathy Davidson, qtd. in Berkhofer 8) [SoundBite #315]
693) If the past seems always under construction, that is because each generation has to decide for itself what it wants to remember and what it wants forgot -- and who will remember it. For the kinds of persons we become is largely a function of the kinds of persons we adopt as predecessors, and the beliefs and values and ways of thinking they embody. (David Harlan 55) [SoundBite #347]
694) The past isn't dead; it isn't even past. (William Faulkner) [SoundBite #515]
695) Even as film and television are increasingly important as interpreters of history, most professional historians have seen filmmakers as outsiders who need not be addressed. (Donald F. Stevens 5) [SoundBite #415]
696) Movies can tell us about ourselves. A film gets made because someone thought that it would resonate with the public mind. The decisions involved throughout it its creation -- from writing the script to editing during post-production -- tell us about the norms and desires of our society. Many characters are created knowing that most moviegoers look for characters or story lines to identify with. In that sense, movies and the characters therein, represent on some level, what we strive to be -- the reality we wish we had. (Patrick O'Brien, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #3659]
697) To paraphrase Bacon, we must put history to the rack, we must compel it to answer our questions. Our questions, derived from our needs, couched in our terms. (David Harlan 30) [SoundBite #277]
698) Curators of history museums know that their visitors bring archetypes in with them. Some curators consciously design exhibits to confront these archetypes when they are inaccurate. Textbooks, authors, teachers, and moviemakers would better fulfill their educational mission if they also taught against inaccurate archetypes. (James W. Loewen 22) [SoundBite #4303]
699) Not only do textbooks fail to blame the federal government for its opposition to the civil rights movement, many actually credit the government, almost single-handedly, for the advances made during the period. In doing so, textbooks follow what we might call the Hollywood approach to civil rights. (James W. Loewen 228) [SoundBite #4304]
700) Textbooks abandon their idealistic presentations of Reconstruction in favor of the Confederate meth, for if blacks were inferior, then the historical period in which they enjoyed equal rights must have been dominated by wrong-thinking Americans. Vaudeville continued the portrayal of silly, lying, chicken–stealing black idiots. So did early silent movies. (James W. Loewen 157) [SoundBite #4305]
