Case Statement - National Council on Public History

Anita Lucchesi
January 17, 2013
2013 NCPH Annual Meeting
Working Group: Teaching Digital History and New Media
<strong>Case</strong> <strong>Statement</strong>
My name is Anita Lucchesi. I am a second-year MA candidate in a Comparative History
Program at the “Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro”, a publicly funded university in Rio de
Janeiro-Brazil. I feel that I am in a special situation as a participant of this inspiring discussion
we are about to start. I am not a public history formal educator, and I am not a graduate
student from a Digital or Public History Program. Although I am studying Digital History since
2008, and it’s been the main subject to all my articles and researches since then.
My participation in this Working Group is going to be my first chance to talk with and hear
from people that are interested in the same subject as I am. This is due to the fact that,
unfortunately, in Brazil we are still lagging behind in Digital and Public History (We have no
Graduate Programs on it here until now). However, we are beginning to think about the use of
digital technologies for historical research and its introduction in institutions and universities in
Brazil. I believe that my participation in this group will offer my point of view about what I
have learned from this lack of graduate instruction versus the real experiences and practical
use of Digital History and New Media, from which I hope to learn in the whole conference.
I got into this digital medium (in lacking another term and uncertain in calling it a “field” or a
“method”) since my undergraduate studies by myself, clicking from link to link with no end in
sight after I was presented to the CHNM by Serge Noiret (EUI/IFPH) – to whom I owe my foray
into the theme. In 2011, I concluded my BA research about using the Internet as a tool for
historians, in which I reflected on theoretical and methodological issues for the process of
writing history in a Digital Age. Currently, in my MA thesis, I am comparing the understanding
of what Digital History is supposed to be for historians in both the United States and Italy.
To be honest, the reading of the previously sent statements was already an instructive and
thrilling exercise for me. It emphasizes my status as a foreign “freshman” in the group, but also
show me in a clear manner how I might contribute to our conversation in face of my distinct
background mentioned above. Assuming the perspective of a potential student earnest to
become a public and digital historian, the main goals of training on digital history I would
expect from my educators must pass by these unavoidable features:
(1) Educators should prepare their students to grapple with the abundance of the digital
avenue anticipated by Roy Rosenzweig and, thereby, stimulate them to consider it and
be ready to dribble its dispersibility. I guess it is fundamental to push students to think
about the paradoxical Harald Weinrich’s quote: “Stored, in other words, forgotten”.
(2) Another question that needs careful handling is the impermanence of the digital in
general. It may require some accurate interpretation skills to deal with dilemmas
brought out to our craft by the fluidity of writing digital history. Differently of historical
printed works, digital projects must be analyzed as a work-in-progress all the time. As