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The primary course blog for HIST 246, Spring 2011
 

Archive for February, 2011

Weekend Round-Up

Friday, February 25th, 2011

You all did some really interesting research this week. This is an especially good week for you to read each other’s posts. Check out Victor’s and Courtney’s posts on articles from 1863 in the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph. Examining a September 12th article, Courtney finds, “that the primary, contemporary account of the battle, published merely days after the events, did not glorify the victory as much as I may have thought.” The September 16th articles Victor examines show grander commemoration of the victory taking shape only a few days later. The battle is now being lauded as a “greatest feat of the war,” and Mr. Charles Otis is arranging a concert in honor of the “gallant” Davis Guards.

As several of you found, the articles and headlines surrounding articles on Dowling can be quite revealing. Analyzing the context surrounding an 1889 Houston Post article, Tyler argues that in this period, “The nation was repairing itself, and the South was thanking its veterans for their sacrificing.” Kat examines a 1966 Houston Chronicle article, “Texas Will Dedicate Marker to Honor Sabine Pass Victory.” She finds that the coverage surrounding the article “shed[s] light upon the changing times of a nation at war in Vietnam and facing considerable cultural change at home.”

Your research on these newspapers and magazines offers insight into the relationship between memorializers and their socio-cultural context. If any of you are interested in learning a bit more about the newspapers you looked at, check the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas Online. Here is an overview of newspapers in Texas, but you can also search for entries on various Texas newspapers such as the Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Houston Post, or Houston Chronicle.

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Blog Post #6

Friday, February 18th, 2011

Your sixth blog post assignment is based on Library Assignment #1. Write a blog post summarizing AND analyzing the two articles that you located in the library.

As you discuss the article from List A, please include any pertinent things you noticed about the context surrounding the article. For example, what else was going on in Houston or the state and country that day that might shed light on the way Dowling was remembered at that moment? Does the placement of the article in the paper (front page, or opinion pages, or lifestyle pages, etc.) change the way you see the article?

Since the article from List B will be new to members if the class, you may also want to revisit some of the earlier research questions that we’ve raised about Dowling and apply them to this article. Does this article help answer some of our earlier questions? Does it raise new questions?

Your blog post is due Thursday, February 24, at 9 a.m.

Posted in Assignments, Blog Post Prompts, Dowling | Comments Off on Blog Post #6

Internship Opportunity

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

This is an announcement to let you all know that the Humanities Research Center will be sponsoring three undergraduate research interns to work on the Dowling Archive project–two this summer, and one this fall. If this is something that interests you, I’d encourage you to apply. Please be aware that these internships are unfortunately limited to three, so it’s possible that not everyone who applies will be accepted. See the information at the Humanities Research Center for more information, and please note that the deadline for applications is March 9.

Posted in Announcements, Dowling | Comments Off on Internship Opportunity

Library Assignment #1

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Map of the Microfilm Room in Fondren

Your first library assignment will require you to locate, digitize, and transcribe newspaper or magazine articles about Dick Dowling, the battle of Sabine Pass, and/or the ways they have been remembered and represented over time. The digital items you create as part of this library assignment will eventually be included in the Omeka-based online archive of Dowling materials, so it is especially important to follow the instructions in this prompt carefully. The quality of this archive depends on you.

Here is a step-by-step guide to completing Library Assignment #1.

STEP 1: Go to this Writeboard link and enter the password distributed in class. Now, select one newspaper/magazine issue from List A AND one issue from List B. To claim your issues, click the “Edit This Page” button, and then put your last name in parentheses after the date of your issue. Then, be sure to enter your name in the box at the bottom of the page and click “Save as the Newest Version.” Failing to click this button will erase whatever changes you make and may enable another student to come along later and claim an issue you thought was yours.

STEP 2: Next, go to Fondren library and figure out how to view the two issues you have selected. Most of the Chronicle and Post articles will be available on microfilm in the basement. The Confederate Veteran is available in bound volumes in the Fondren stacks. The other titles should also be available in Fondren; use the catalog to find out where. If you have trouble locating your issues, talk to a reference librarian or email Mercy.

STEP 3: Look through the entire issue you’ve been assigned, and locate any article or item relating to Dowling, Sabine Pass, or the Dowling statue. As you look for articles about Dowling, you should also take some notes about the other kinds of articles and news in this issue of the paper. What else is going on in this issue or around this time? You may wish to look at a couple of issues before and after your assigned issues to get a sense of the context, and you may discover articles that are not specifically about Dowling that you still think are relevant to the sorts of research questions you’ve been asking in your blog posts (about, for example, perceptions of the Confederacy, of slavery and race, or of Irish Americans and Catholics). Save your notes as they may come in handy for Blog Post #6.

STEP 4: Create digital reproductions of the articles you find related to Dowling and Sabine Pass. You should scan the articles as *.TIFF files, using a resolution of 400 DPI. If there is a photograph, use “grayscale.” If there is only text in the article, then “black and white” will suffice. (For help scanning the articles, you can consult librarians in Fondren; they are there to help you!) All of the issues on List A and List B have at least one article about Dowling in them, so you should have at least two *.TIFF files by the end of this step, but you may find other articles you want to digitize because they seem related, and your article may have multiple pages, requiring multiple TIFF files. Give each of your files a brief, unique filename. Check to make sure the file is legible when you open it, and that you can read the words. If zooming in is necessary to read the article, make sure there is not too much pixelation when you zoom in to read. MAKE SURE YOU NOTE THE SECTION AND PAGE NUMBER ON WHICH THE ARTICLE APPEARS.

STEP 5: Transcribe the articles using a word processor. Type out each article word for word in its own document, being careful to avoid typos and indicating in brackets any word you’re unsure of. Save each document using the same filename you used for the image file, but be sure the extension for the file name is different from the image file (e.g., *.doc instead of *.tif).

STEP 6: Finally, log in to OWL-Space and navigate to the tab for HIST 246. You should see a folder called “Dowling Digital Archive Files.” Next to that folder, click on “Add,” and then select “Upload Files.” Now upload both the TIFF image files and the transcription documents you’ve created to the OWL-Space folder.

STEP 7: Now go to this Google form, and for each item you have scanned and transcribed, fill out the information on the form. You will need to fill out the form and press “submit” for each article you have scanned. These fields will provide the metadata for your item, so it is extremely important to fill out the fields as completely and accurately as possible. BE SURE TO PRESS SUBMIT SO YOUR DATA IS NOT LOST. To protect your data, you may want to fill out the answers to the form in a file on your hard drive and then copy and paste them into the form.

All of these steps must be completed by MIDNIGHT on Wednesday, February 23. It is especially important to meet this deadline because your Blog Post #6 will also relate to this assignment, so don’t wait until the last minute. Completing this assignment will require advance planning; technological glitches, library hours, and eleventh-hour problems are not extenuating circumstances that would excuse a failure to meet the deadline. Start soon and you’ll finish happy.

You will receive a grade for this assignment based on your precision and thoroughness in following these instructions, as well as on the thoughtfulness and concision of the brief description you provide about the item when filling out the Google Form. The grade is worth 10% of your total grade.

Posted in Assignments, Dowling | Comments Off on Library Assignment #1

Weekend Round-Up

Friday, February 11th, 2011

As we begin to work with primary documents on the Dowling monument, it will be especially useful for everyone to read each other’s blog posts. As you discovered this week, the Houston Public Digital Archives on Dowling contain many rich documents that merit a close, careful, and critical reading. By analyzing these documents and building on the research and interpretations of others, we can develop “maximal explanations” to answer our questions about the monument. This week I’d like to point you to two posts:

Kat concentrates on what might seem a smaller piece of the Dowling puzzle: the names inscribed on the monument. Yet her examination of the Dick Dowling Monument Association Records reveals that as Mr. D.D. Bryan complied the roster, he faced a large and disturbing problem: some of Dowling’s men were deserters. This finding has important implications; as Kat explains, “that the Davis Guards had deserters takes away from [Cotham’s The Confederacy’s Thermopylae’s] image of valiant men choosing to stay at all costs.”

Craig examines newspaper articles and the 1997 rededication ceremony program to trace changes in the way Dowling has been remembered since 1905. By analyzing the language used to describe Dowling in these documents, Craig finds that since the 1950s Dowling’s Irish heritage and civic work has been emphasized, rather than his Confederate military service. But this finding has led him to ask a question many of you also had: “Was the Civil Rights movement a causative factor for this shift in public memory of the monument?”

In light of this shared – and important – question, I’m posting a snippet from another primary source. At the Annual Convention of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1957, Julie Dunn gave her official report as the Chairman of the Division’s Radio and Television Committee:

OUR MEMBERSHIP SHOULD AWAKEN TO THE VAST OPPORTUNITIES OF TV AND RADIO, FOR A MINIMUM OF EFFORT EXERTED RESULTS CAN BE OVERWHELMING.

On March 4, 1957, in cooperation with Mr. Barthold, Program Director of KUHT-TV, channel 8, the University of Houston presented “The War Between the States” on TV. A series of ten television lectures called – “The Confederate Debut”. This series of bi-weekly programs was given in conjunction with the Military Science and Tactics Department of the University, with Captain Richard C. Robbins, Department Assistant, as director. The history of the major battles of the War Between the States was discussed and approached from all military aspects – Maps, Charts, Southern Music, and Photographs as well as scale models of the Battlefields were incorporated into the lectures. Your chairman was in Houston for one of these telecasts.

The schedule for the program from 8:00 to 8:30 P.M. on Mondays and Wednesdays on the nation’s Educational Station – the Radio and TV Film Center – was as follows:

Monday, March 4: “The First Battle of Manassas.”

Wednesday, March 6: “Battle of Shiloh.”

Wednesday, March 13: “Seven Days’ Battle.”

Monday, March 18: “Battle of Chancellorsville.”

Wednesday, March 20: “Battle of Antietam.”

Wednesday, March 27: “Battle of Fredericksburg.”

Monday, April 1: “Battle of Gettysburg.”

Wednesday, April 3: “Battle of Vicksburg.”

Wednesday, April 10: “Battle of Missionary Ridge.”

Monday, April 15: “Strategy and Tactics of General Grant After Assuming Command of all the Union Forces.”

As this series closed all the major TV stations of the State were contacted, asking them to present similar broadcasts in conjunction with their nearest R.O.T.C. They were assured that KUHT and the University of Houston would cooperate, and possibly lend scripts, etc. The response was wonderful, with 3 stations scheduling much the same telecourses. – Julie (Mrs. Keet) Dunn, “Report of Radio and Television Committee,” Sixty First Annual Convention, Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (held in Austin: September 23-26, 1957), p. 66-67. Emphasis and caps in original.

In the posts this week, many of you identified a shift away from Confederate memory in the 1950s. What do you make of Dunn’s report? Soon I’ll be talking to the class about the Texas Division of the UDC, so if this quote has sparked any questions, comments, or ideas, I hope you’ll share them with me by commenting on this post, or by sending me an email.

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Emancipation Park

Monday, February 7th, 2011

 

A Google Maps image of Emancipation Park in downtown Houston, TX, showing cross-streets

During the first week of class, just before we walked over to the Dowling statue in Hermann Park, I pointed out that there is an important historic site in downtown Houston–Emancipation Park–that sits at the intersection of two streets whose names were inspired by Dowling–Tuam Street (after Dowling’s birthplace in Ireland) and Dowling Street. Coincidentally, Emancipation Park has been in the news lately thanks to plans by architect Philip Freelon to turn the park into a vibrant new cultural center.

Freelon recently visited the Menil gallery to talk about his plans, and one of the students in HIST 300–the independent study I mentioned in my last post–went to the talk. You can read her report about the lecture here.

Posted in Dowling, In the News | Comments Off on Emancipation Park

Weekend Round-Up

Friday, February 4th, 2011

I hope you’ll take a chance to check out others’ blog posts on this “snow day”:

Drawing on her understanding of the role of crisis in party realignment in the U.S., Renee found Kornblith’s article “quite persuasive.” Juri – although he was somewhat bothered by the assumptions Kornblith made as he crafted his counterfactual hypothesis – found Kornblith’s argument a “reasonable” case that “lends doubt to the fundamentalist viewpoint.”

Not everyone found Kornblith convincing. Alex finds too many “leaps of faith” in Kornblith’s theory that the issue of slavery could have faded into the background. Alex explains, “there must have already been heated tensions about the growing institution of slavery, even before the annexation of the Mexican Cession.” Jocelyn adds that Kornblith has not thoroughly considered fundamentalists’ arguments about the importance of economic differences and the role of the Fugitive Slave Law.

At the conclusion of his article, Kornblith acknowledged that counterfactual method could never resolve the debate between revisionists and fundamentalists. However, he hoped his article would encourage readers reflect on “how different factors interacted to bring war in 1861, rather than at another date.” Was Kornblith successful in this goal, even for those of you who disagreed with the shape that his counterfactual hypothesis took? How useful would this methodology be for navigating other debates in Civil War historiography?

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Blog Post #5

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Program for the Dick Dowling Monument Rededication, Houston Public Library (HMRC SC1268-01-01)

In your second blog posts, you closely examined the Dick Dowling statue in Hermann Park and came up with some excellent research questions about the statue itself and the memory of the Battle of Sabine Pass. In this blog post, you’ll have the opportunity to do research with primary source documents to answer some of those questions and to generate more.

STEP 1: Read and Research. Before writing your post, go back and look at some of the questions that you and your classmates wanted answered about the Dowling statue. Then, spend at least an hour or two browsing through the Houston Public Library Digital Archives related to Dowling and the Statue. (The image in this post is an example of the kind of thing you’ll find in the archive: an invitation to the dedication ceremony held at the statue in 1997.) See if you can find anything that you think helps answer a question you or another student has about the statue. As explained in class on Tuesday, make note of the specific call number (usually something SC-1268-01-01) for any item of interest to you; the call numbers are listed in the navigation pane on the left. Note that to navigate the archive you should use a web browser that can easily load PDF files within the browser itself, like Safari or Explorer. Optional: As you try to answer your questions, you may also wish to consult the article “Dick Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass” by Andrew Forest Muir, a former professor here at Rice (available here as a PDF), or the book Sabine Pass, by Edward Cotham, which is available on desk reserve at Fondren.

STEP 2: Report. As you write your post, begin by reporting on what you found in the archive. What questions about Dowling can the item(s) help answer? In your report, you may cite the Muir article and/or the Cotham book if you would like, but be sure to include at least some citation to the items in the archive itself, using the call numbers you recorded while browsing.

STEP 3: Raise New Questions. Conclude your post by generating some new question(s) about the statue or about the memory of Dowling that was prompted by your browsing through the archive.

This post will be due by 9 a.m. on Thursday, February 10. You may also notice comments on your posts being left by some Rice students whose names you won’t recognize. This semester, four students are enrolled in an independent study course (HIST 300) that is focused on public history and Civil War Memory. They will be working intensively on the Omeka archive that we will also be working in our class, and they have already read and discussed Cotham’s book on Sabine Pass. Two of these HIST 300 students, Kat and Jocelyn, are in our class; two of them, Ryan and Jaclyn, are not. I’ve encouraged all four of them to chime in on your posts when and where they can shed light from their deeper study of the battle and of Civil War memory.

Posted in Assignments, Blog Post Prompts, Dowling | Comments Off on Blog Post #5

Using RSS and HTML

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

As you may have noticed, you now have a number of blogs to keep up with in this course. First, you need to know when new posts–either by Mercy or myself–appear on this course blog. But you also should keep tabs on what your other classmates are saying on their blogs.

At the very least, you should follow what people are saying on your small group’s blog, but as Mercy’s weekend “round-up” posts have demonstrated, you can find interesting and helpful posts on the other group blogs as well. And you also may want an easy way to know if comments have been left on your posts by myself, Mercy, or another student.

Finally, in my last post, I linked to two blogs about the Civil War that you may also wish to follow.

So that’s at least two blogs, and optionally as many as five or seven, that you should start keeping up with. Fortunately, there is an easy way to know when blogs have been updated. It’s called RSS–for “Really Simple Syndication.” You’ll notice that at the bottom of this blog, and on most other blogs, there are links to “Entries (RSS)” and “Comments (RSS).” These links point to “feeds” for the posts and comments that appear on this blog. To use the feeds, you need a “feed reader,” and then you simply have to add these feeds to your reader (also known as “subscribing” to them). It’s sort of like “following” friends on Facebook and then viewing your “news feed”–instead of going to each of your friend’s profiles, all of the latest news is sent to your feed as it happens. Likewise, once you’ve subscribed to RSS feeds, new posts will simply appear in your reader when they are published, so that you don’t have to bookmark each blog and check it constantly for updates.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, here’s a useful introduction to using RSS, as well as a tutorial about how to use Google Reader, one of the many available web-based services that allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds.

Since you are now publishing your own posts and will soon be working on digital projects with your small groups, you may also want to familiarize yourself with some basic HTML tags. You may never need to use some of these tags, but looking at them is useful because it’s a good reminder that text published on a blog or a webpage isn’t formatted exactly like it would be in a Microsoft Word document. For example, you may have already noticed that indented tabs don’t show up in your blog posts even if they were in the word processing file where you composed your post. That’s one reason why it’s a standard convention when writing blog posts to put a blank line (a hard return) between each paragraph.

Let me know if you have questions about any of this, and if you have other web-savvy tips that you think the rest of the class would find useful, feel free to leave them in the comments to this post.

Posted in Blogging How-To | Comments Off on Using RSS and HTML