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Can you describe your approach to history?
10 REGIS TODAY
In the first couple of years my program’s motto was: “Regis College is changing history!” And it really was. My approach to history is based on a hybrid model that borrows heavily from the field of anthropology, but really stretches across the traditional liberal arts disciplines. My own graduate education was an interdisciplinary one and my most influential professors and mentors were very progressive; their courses were based largely in post-modern theoretical models, and this approach becomes very visible in the work I do. I try to engage the historical narrative holistically. I see the written record as one form of historical artifact and believe that it is essential to put that record in conversation with other historical artifacts —things like material culture (art, architecture, landscape, textiles, archaeological artifacts, etc.); alternative forms of written culture (literature and poetry); and cultural artifacts, essentially cultural memory (folklore, oral tradition, and personal narratives, prayers, rituals, etc.). This approach brings the study outside of the archives and requires fieldwork, ethnography, and oral history in addition to a different kind of interpretation—a more open-ended, holistic one. If you could live in another culture and another time, what would that be and why?
Okay, this is totally a selfish reason. I’d love to go back to the Cilento Coast of Italy in the ninth century. I’m dying to know if my theories about the religious culture of that place and time are even close to what was really there. Who knows? I could be way off base! One caveat—once I have my answer, I’d want to come back!
Oh my goodness! God bless the person who would have the ill fate of analyzing my personal history! It’s just so, I don’t know, circuitous I guess you might say. I’m a strange mix of curious—adventurous even, academic, yet totally blue collar, both intellectual (even contemplative at times) and downright silly. I am not sure I know what I want to be when I grow up! My circle of friends contains the most ridiculous cast of characters—of course I use that term in an endearing way. I think I’d confuse the daylights out of anyone analyzing my history.
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What is your current research project?
Years ago, I started working on a project in an amazingly picturesque fishing village, Castellabate, in southwest Italy. I was there researching the Castle of the Abbot, a typical Norman-era fortified settlement built in the early 12th century by a Benedictine Abbot who served as the ecclesiastical baron there. The region was essentially untouched by American scholars and I was there to tell the story of power relations between the Normans, their Benedictine administrators, local merchants, and the town’s inhabitants. I found everything I needed to tell this story but it was in every way your standard “garden variety” historical narrative.
photo: Kathleen Dooher
If you were analyzing your own personal history, what threads would you identify and study?
10/19/12 4:03 PM