1. What limitations or “blind-spots” result from a top-down historical approach? What challenges might be encountered with telling history from the bottom up? Do you think that the stories of everyday people matter, or should our study and knowledge of the past focus on political leaders and other movers and shakers? Why or why not? Discuss the relationship of minority and working-class histories with “official” master narratives. Are they easily reconciled or are they incongruous? Explain.
2. Can you see the role that social identities (race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc.) have played in city planning where you grew up? Provide examples.
3. What gaps are there in your family history? What do you wish you knew about your ancestors? Why is this information not easily accessible? How does your family discuss its own past? Is it something to be learned from or as something to be left behind? Is your familial past seen as a touchstone for how much life has gotten better or worsened?
4. What value and/or limits, if any, do you see in familial stories?
5. While official history is often shaped by formal documents such as those that articulate policies or laws, or the interviews, memoirs, and journals of important leaders, how do we understand the role of everyday folks in history? What evidence might “everyday experience” bring to the table? What insights or expertise can they offer to historical events? What insights might personal letters, high school paraphernalia, memory books, and other ephemeral matter provide for helping to reconstruct one’s life story as part of a larger narrative? Can these materials provide insight into individual lives in the larger context of national and regional events?
(Re)constructing Memory, Place, and Identity in Twentieth Century Houston
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