If you click here you will get to Professor Joanna Freeman’s article on being an (American) historian in the Pandemic. It is from the Washington Post.
In it she argues, “historians don’t just study history. We construct it. We puzzle pieces into meanings. Aided by our instincts and experiences, as well as by our research, we make sense of other times, other nations, other peoples. In that sense, the writing of history is always personal. But it’s one thing to reckon with the past and quite another to make sense of transparently historical events as we live through them. Like so many others, I’m staggered by daily bursts of upset and unknowingness, alternately depressed, anxious, angry, and distracted. There’s a whole-soul exhaustion born of living in the age of Trump. And looking to the past provides no respite. Indeed, when it comes to decoding our current crises, American history holds some hard lessons. As a historian, I know that things don’t always return to “normal” and that recovery is painfully slow and piecemeal. I know that “good” doesn’t always prevail and that past accomplishments can be undone, past injustices reborn. I know that dangers often rise unnoticed and trigger transformative change in a rush. I know the vital importance of the institutional guardrails crumbling around us, and the dangers inherent in unbridled power. And I know—deep in my gut—that I have taken things for granted that I will never take for granted again.”
Have a read, and see what you think.
Mr Kydd
