Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is my idol. Her material culture analysis of Hannah Barnard's cupboard is pure genius. If my writing could be 1/10 as insightful as her work I would die a happy woman.
That is why I am so excited that there is an interview with Ulrich in the April 2009 issue of Historically Speaking (available through Project Muse). You'll need a subscription to read it, but let me point out a couple of the highlights:
...
Stephens: In [your new book] Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History you write: “History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.” What have those barely audible voices said to us, and why do they matter?
Ulrich: What does Martha Ballard’s diary tell us that the papers of George Washington don’t about the same historical period? In my view, plenty. For instance, Martha Ballard’s diary turns on its head the conventional narrative of the rise of modern medicine, which charts the progress from primitive lay healers to scientific healers, championing the superiority of the latter. But when you compare Martha Ballard’s diary with the records of 19th-century physicians, you get two different pictures of childbirth. The physicians’ account books reveal a succession of dangerous cases. Yet when I go to Martha Ballard’s diary, I realize that dangerous cases were rare. Doctors and their tools were making childbirth more dangerous, not less so.
Another example: economic history. The conventional narrative says that late 18th- and early 19th-century America was in the throes of a consumer revolution. And, indeed, storekeepers’ accounts from Martha Ballard’s time and place portray an economy in which local inhabitants exchanged lumber for the manufactured goods brought in on ships. But Martha’s diary reveals that she and others were constantly spinning and weaving, making their own clothes. According to storekeepers’ accounts, a consumer revolution wiped out local production. Yet an ordinary woman’s diary shows that local production was still very important, as well as interwoven with the commercial marketplace. By studying Martha Ballard’s diary, you can understand the difference between a calico dress, which Martha’s daughter had, and all the other clothing and bedding that was made at home.
...
This excerpt is a great explanation of how social historians
do history and why we are so obsessive and compulsive about our sources: "There’s a lot of discussion about the return of narrative and the importance of narratives. I buy that, but I’m a historian who both admires and resists that move, because I think one of the things
that is so fabulous about history is the grounding provided by documentation. I’m one of many historians who construct participatory narratives. I tell a story, but I allow the reader to participate in the reconstruction of the story. I think that was the way the film worked as well, in contrast, say, to HBO’s
John Adams, which made a lot stuff up without making that clear. But I suspect that there’s a real element of mystery in every historical reconstruction. We can’t fully access the past."
.png){kind=small}
