Hi all. My name is Sam Kwait-Spitzer. I (he/him/his) am a junior history major and Spanish minor. What drew me to History in the first-place is how people-centric of a discipline it is. At its core (as if there exists a single core of History) History is about stories, understanding lived experience and tracing the systems of power that exist at all levels of community. Though my major subfield is Early Modern/Modern Europe, by virtue of having taken the most amount of classes in the field, I still am not sure what my primary thematic interests are within history as defined by these subfields. What fascinates me most about history is exploring how individuals consume political rhetoric, and how conceptions of political moments and projects of nation-building are informed by identity. Since politics exists in the most public of realms, my academic interests segway quite nicely into projects of public history. After taking HIST 298, I am interested in putting the theory we learned, especially as it pertains to the construction, control, and preservation of knowledge, into practice.
I hope by being an active participant in the archive-building process, I will become a more self-reflexive scholar, and better able to see how power operates as it pertains to the ownership of historic knowledge. More specifically, I am interested in archival work with school newspapers. I would like to work with content in which I have a particular stake. So both as a college student and campus journalist, I feel that I can leverage my positionality to help build an archive that represents the impacts/feelings/experiences associated with COVID-19 in a college setting. I look forward to being on both sides of the archive.
I think this is the first moment in my life where the historical nature thereof is so clear. Certainly, this is also enmeshed in my privilege, as I am not forced to reckon with my existence, survival, or societal collapse frequently, but that should not diminish the unique nature of this moment for all. Going back to my aforementioned interest in individual conceptions of political moments, I am interested in seeing how different individuals, communities, and institutions are conceptualizing the abundantly historical nature of this moment. Public health crises often exacerbate and lay bare the fault lines of power within a society. I am excited to help build an archive that represents how different agendas are at play-during this crisis, those that seek to reify the status quo, those that seek to break down inequities, those that do both, or those that lie somewhere in the middle.
Hi Sam,
Your project sounds fascinating, and I am excited to see how you expand your project over the course of the term. I think you raise an interesting point about the conceptualization of the historical moment and its relations to power. I am curious to see how you tie in your interest with power relations with school newspapers, which would have an interesting perspective.