Catching the Public Eye!

Tyrrell and Brinkley both write about history being a distant topic from the general public and both investigate reasons for why this may be the case. Some may attribute this to the idea that something is “wrong” with history but I rather agree with a statement given by Tyrrell in which he states, “Historians have – despite the mythology – long been engaged with public audiences but the particular audiences engaged have changed over time.” This one phrase sums up a lot. Today for example, many interested in learning about the past turn to the infamous History Channel on television. Why you ask? It is both entertaining and sometimes viewers can somehow connect to what they are watching. Now this obviously is not always the most scholarly form of learning history but it does give the raw facts necessary to understand a past event. Before television existed it can be inferred that the reading of text by the public was much higher. So like Tyrrell states, history and the way it has been presented by its scholars is not necessarily wrong, its audience has just changed and therefore scholars need to accommodate their text to reach out and catch the eye of the ever changing audience. What captured the minds of individuals in the 1920’s probably will not do the same to individuals today!

As far as audience goes, I do feel in a way that I am the kind of audience that the historians in the readings are trying to reach. Yes, I may be an undergraduate college student studying History and fit into that category that Brinkley considers the “undergraduate classroom” (1027) but at the same time I believe I am part of the general public that many times refuses to read a majority of works written by academic scholars because I am simply disinterested, especially when something is written very far in the past. Yes, this may be more scholarly in some terms but it is just not interesting to generations today.

The way in which history is written, I believe is a key player in attracting any individual audience. If a text, whether it be book, journal, essay etc. is written using complex language in which a reader has to retreat to a dictionary every few words to look up a definition or search on Wikipedia to find the jist of what a word means in context, readers are going to be turned off by what they are reading. There is no doubt that this especially happens with the general public. I believe that a lot of historians present their topics/case with very precise and intelligent information giving little connection for the general reader to relate to. For example, I know someone who has a historical writing class this semester and one of the required texts is Constitutional Law by authors Sullivan and Gunther and contains about 1370 pages dealing with various constitutional and Supreme Court cases that have been significant in the history of the United States. Now as informational and great this book may be, general readers are going to be turned away from this text the second they see how large the binding is and when they flip through the pages to realize the pages are phone book thin filled with less than 12 pt. font. I think that if historians want to reach the general public they need to consider a few things such as: What will entertain my reader? How can I make this text informational AND appealing? Is there a way to create personal connections with the reader? Considering these things as well as many other factors I believe could greatly increase public interest! Even Alan Brinkley questioned this in his article in a similar fashion asking “How do academics make the work they consider important seem interesting and significant to others?” (1029)

Question to think about: What big name historians are out there that do catch the public eye? Are there any? If so, how do they catch the snag?

As far as understanding the past, how do I understand the past? I would have to say initially I do tend to look toward the works of academic scholars and then when I come across their works being too intellectual and tedious I immediately turn to other forms of research such as works by less scholarly academics leading me to firsthand accounts of specific historical events by an author telling his/her story and what happened and what they saw and how it affected their lives.