sixteen she joined historical society staff as a curator of collections in exhibitions and twenty fifteen and has worked in a number of roles at h s p including an docent research assistant and other position since two thousand and seven is the overseas daily operations center just fumble for a just peace fiscal health as well as developing its programs if he is passionate about history and h s p programming and its incredible collections on the beautiful farmstead that is now located on she also happens to be an alumnus of princeton public schools and so we're thrilled to have her here tonight is here in her be a in history at princeton university where she focused on her independent work on the local princeton histories and was awarded the moses taylor pine prize and i'll have to tell her as a little bit more about herself in just a moment it is great to have you here tonight thank you so much for joining us as you for having me so tell us what got you interested in history homie and that is a big question but i think i have to say that historical fiction was my first foray into history i was a really avid reader as a child and i very quickly realized that my favorite genre of fiction was historical fiction i really so enjoyed reading about people like myself  different time periods and i think i was lucky enough to grow up in a time in the early to mid ninety's when there was this huge resurgence in i don't know if i could even say resurgence because i don't know if it existed before but  it was a huge deal and there was also quite a bit of writing in the girl age historical fiction world so you had dear america an american girl and there were entire brands set up around these stories that i kind of started with the books and then if you like the book there was the movie version or you could buy the outfits or you know they were all of these ways to interact with these stories and i think that was what first showed me that a love of history starts with seeing yourself in the past because the power of seeing nine year old girl who felt similar to me and reading about her own struggles that i could actually relate to but how it articulated in a different time period  i found that really engaging and i think that i continue to think about that on a day to day basis in my job now in terms of history is magical when it is a story and you see characters in history that really to who you are as a person in the present so i think history is successful when it is storytelling interesting are there any stories that you remember from your childhood that really stood out to you as far as this historic historical fiction there was a really powerful moment so i was definitely an american girl geek and i read all of the american girl books that is the series of  dolls that dated to different time periods actually each of the ten dates that they emerged from ended with the four which i always found very interesting but i had read all of the kit books she had come out when i was i think only elementary school and she was the great depression doll and i think her books were my favorite i can't really tell you i just really related to kipps issues struggles and her brother charlie his name was was in the c c c the civilian conservation corps and they talked about what that was and why it existed and she would get letters from charlie and it was able to flush out what exactly the w p a what you know all of these initiatives that franklin roosevelt set up i learned about through the kids books and then we were on a family trip to shenandoah national park one year and we were sitting at the picket picnic table and this older gentleman listening at the table next to us we were all eating our lunch and eventually started striking up a conversation with him and it turned out that he was in the civilian conservation corps at that very park and he built the picnic tables that we were sitting on as part of that initiative and it was this moment where i could directly connect character in this book that i had read to the person that i met in real life and it was this incredibly salient moment of experiencing history and i felt like i could understand him and the things that he had gone through which was a very powerful moment for someone that i had nothing in common with really aside from having read about someone fictionally similar to him in this book so so tell us a little bit about your background and history i know that you went to princeton university what else of your background and history what have you done over the years  so i did go to princeton i did several pieces of independent work there doing independent research related to different historical topics so as you mentioned in the beginning i did one of those pieces of independent work about  the homefront experience in princeton during world war two as comparing the experiences of african american residents to princeton white residents and how that kind of defacto segregation of princeton at that time is because it was does your segregation may have affected patriotic experiences during world war two and then i also worked on some independent work about world affairs i think in general i've always been in fascinated by this question of public memory which is basically if you're familiar with historiography which is the study of how historians have interpreted various events over time so often times if there is new evidence or if there is a different interpretation of existing evidence the historical argument surrounding that event may change based on academic historians writings public memory is almost the grassroots version of that so it's you know how do people understand their own at the general public level and how do they tell those stories to the general public if we understand that the audience of academic historians may not be the general public through various means so i i think that it's almost more powerful to understand that than it is to understand what academic historians say sometimes because oftentimes the two are different what people think might have happened or what they've heard through various channels or what they assume about the past may not necessarily be factually correct per historian standards but that doesn't make it any more important to understand because those assumptions are the ones that perhaps underline all of our decisions as individuals so i've always been fascinated studying that change over time as to how we understand you know our history as americans and so i did that in the context of world affairs which were these big historical commemorative celebrations so how do we look at our own historical anniversaries did we use those to talk about the past what were the narratives we were telling what were the narratives we were not telling what were were we perhaps silencing at different moments for different reasons so after having studied a variety of history and i know you even stud abroad you got your master's degree over in england i believe it was what made you want to come back to princeton the rip in princeton what did you want to come back and work here and work in the history of princeton i think i was always interested in practicing local history public history is something that i knew that i wanted to do professionally a lot a good deal of public history in the united states does happen at that local level and i'm deeply passionate about the power of local public history to really inspire a love of history among people i find that local history is often people's first foray into the past local history can be particularly  it addresses places and names that you've heard every day so if you talk to someone about charles bolden who actually is a very significant figure at the state and national level people in principle all of a sudden say oh well old enough a name i've heard before because perhaps i've driven down or been lane or local history isn't bedded in our landscape in the language of a cabinet that we use in our town every day and so i find that when you start there you're really meeting people where they are and then you can start to pull that into a larger historical narrative and it's easier to bring people in because history gets sometimes gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes people think that history is just apes and  of chronological events but it's really the stories that build the community is that we live in so the best history starts at that community level and i was really interested in doing that in the community that had nurtured me when your vision for the history from society of princeton given all of that that you just talked about with the idea that that our narratives and our idea of what our community is is based on this historical narrative and we have a piece of that pie  i think that that's exactly what i think that we we benefit from the fact that we we just moved out to the uptake farmstead which really just gives us so much more potential in the kinds of programming that we can offer the prince and community and also definitely helps encourage us to work even harder to get those narratives built into the landscape in a way that's much easier for people to experience history on a day to day basis without actually needing to go into a museum at all and i think that's important for people to realize that history doesn't have to happen inside a gallery history should be something that we experience every day when we ask questions and we try to understand the places that we're looking at the or the conversations that we're having so one of the things that i'm really hoping to do at the historical society is really increase the programming that we can provide that goes beyond just the four walls of our museum so we're talking  about we're actually in the process of developing an app that will provide digital versions of our historic walking tour so people can access that information anytime anywhere to learn about places that they're looking at and the app format also helps us build in collections materials that we wouldn't necessarily have been able to put into perhaps just you know a pamphlet that give you information about different historic sites so we can have audio clips of oral history interviews or just have different documents or photographs of different items in our collection that really to those places so that's one of the ideas is just really trying to disseminate the narratives and the stories that that help us all make sense of the place where we are and help us all feel connected to the place where we are doing a better job of making sure that people see those without needing to to work so hard to access that information when you talk about getting people engaged in different ways who do you want to come to the so you are you getting the programming mainly towards students and we think about students coming in on field trips learn about local history are you looking at family as adults who are you hoping to get involved with the history it's really anyone and you know that that is sort of abadi answer i think per marketing standard even if you want your audience to be everyone your audience is always someone and i think that is true of us  but i think that there's really something for everyone or there should be something for everyone in the programming that we provide so of course we have amazing school programs we see every single third grader in the town of princeton and even beyond and we're even expanding the school programs that we offer now that we're at the farm and we have so much more space to offer those programs so obviously that is a really core group of people and a core audience that we're serving we are at the core an educational organization but education shouldn't stop at kids who are in school in fact i think it's even more incumbent on us to try to continue to educate people who are out of school because there's always something more to learn so i think our exhibitions we always try to cater to a wide variety of audiences so there's always something in the exhibition for kids to experience there is always an interactive and i think the challenge of museums in terms of the information that we give an exhibition context is layering that information so if you're not a strong  reader if you're younger you can still get something out of a panel but if you're an adult and you are a strong reader you don't want to feel like the museum is talking down to you so these are all the challenges of trying to serve many people at once but we're up for it excellent i'm  little bit and i mentioned earlier that you're an alumni of princeton public school you know which we're thrilled with where alumni go and the things that they're going through something credible i love my out there i'm curious if there's any teachers or experiences that really shaped you going through the public school system and especially in light of being a historian now and working in a museum culture i think well first of all overall i had such an incredible experience in the princeton public schools and per your question as to why i came back i think i felt such a deep connection to the community and what the community had given me in terms of tools for success that i wanted i feel very strongly about giving that back to the community now and helping to  students who want perhaps want to go into historical field or just want to do anything in in the world i i want to be a resource so i'm happy to be back  and contributing to the community that that nurtured me but principal of schools and how they impacted me i had so many incredible teachers but i think i did really have a very fantastic history education experiences in school which really helped me to decide that that's what i wanted to do with with my life in high school i think a project that i did in my freshman year we were wrote a research paper using letters from civil war soldiers and we had to do our own research and track down the letters on our own and use those primary sources to to create an argument and i think that's something that a lot of people i met in college hadn't done yet and certainly struggled with and as someone who works in a museum and in an archive i think that our role is to be providing the primary source resources to teachers so that it becomes so much easier for them to help students engage with primary sources because that's really where the benefit of history education is it's learning how to look at a source learning how to question a source how to corroborate what's in that source how do you decide whether or not the biases of the person writing it  e influencing the argument to an extent that you may or may not be able to take what is being said as fact these are all really important skills that we use on a day to day basis and i think that was so lucky to have history teachers who believed in the importance of resource education in history but so many students don't have that luxury and don't have access to institutions that are making most primary sources available or helping to support teachers and in helping them understand how to teach primary sources  so that's something that i think i felt so lucky about and probably didn't appreciate until college that that was a unique experience and i think i also think back sometimes to the extracurricular  was able to have in school like money when for example there are so many things when i listen to the radio in the morning on my way to work and people are talking for example i was listening to a story yesterday about the paris climate change agreement and people were talking about previous climate change agreements and i had been on a committee that had been renegotiating the kyoto protocol as a simulation and so i was able to remember all these things from that and now i feel like when i consume current affairs today i'm so much more informed and that is really a result of things that i learned or taught myself in high school as part of this model un experience and it was your ball and i think at the time i was it was just fun and i i i thought that it was a good way to engage with other like minded people and a way to socialize but in reality  i used the information that i learned in money when pretty much on a daily basis and i who would have done but that would have been something that would have been so valuable to me but i think that i was so lucky to go to a school that valued educational experiences in and out of the classroom and supported teachers to do creative things and to help me engage with primary sources and all of the things that i think i'm realizing now are so rare that you mention primary sources  importance of having those experiences of a student i know that the historical society has a huge collection that includes some primary sources includes furniture what are some of the highlights of that collection and how can you use that to engage with our community  d that's like to think a favorite child i think something that's very special about our collection is certainly our photograph collection i might be biased because i've worked very deeply with that collection as curator and on the some of the exhibitions i've worked on in the past but it's very rare for a local history going to sation to have a photograph collection of the quality that we have we have over twenty thousand glass plate negatives alone from one professional photography studio in princeton  which is a period of photography where you really did have to know what you were doing to take a quality image so we're lucky enough to have very early photographs this princeton that are professionally done and photographs that aren't necessarily only family snapshots so we're able to create a really comprehensive photographic record of the history of the town which you know photographs are primary sources too so photographs always have i think a lot of times you look at a photograph and see that as the definitive documentation of what something would have looked like but photographs have their own biases and you know a human being took that photograph why did they choose to take that photograph who did they shut out of the photograph who did they put in the photograph and these are all questions that we constantly have to ask when we're looking at any historical source but for all intents and purposes we do have this incredible record of prince and history that visual and it's engaging because it's visual powerful actually the bank that i go to has some historical photographs of things from about the one nine hundred forty thousand fifty's in princeton and it's interesting because i would consider that fairly recent history in the timeline of prince and but still fascinating to look at where we've come from to look at whether spoon and realize oh doesn't it didn't used to look the way that it looks today from the buildings might be the same but the trees are different the cars are different colors on the buildings and it does give you a different perspective that is very visual yeah i think visual records are extremely engaging for people and especially people seeing people a photograph with people in it even if you don't know who the people are there is just something about seeing people in your own town walking the streets that you walk every day in a different time research perspective which of course is quite a lot but from the way that it can build use these sort of direct engagements among among our princeton audiences to princeton of the past you have obviously are i collections are very significant i we have over sixty five pieces of albert einstein furniture in our collection from his house at one twelve mercer street and we also have quite a large collection of personal belongings  einstein's we have the only other albert einstein pipe in a public collection the other one is at the smithsonian wow so that is a collection that really is a strength of ours and really puts us on caliber with some some incredible institutions that collect modern science collections but what what is special about arias is it really tries to capture albert einstein is a person and as a resident of princeton and not necessarily albert einstein as a scientist because there are plenty of institutions that that have the material to do that and we have things from his his private life and and that is a princeton story more albert einstein as our neighbor exactly as princeton neighbor and there are so many people who continue to come into our museum at the who are young enough to remember you know they may have been children when albert einstein was living in princeton and everyone who lived in princeton that time has has an albert einstein memory and connecting those people with the collections  have is really special and also just hearing their recollections is that is a powerful thing so folks want to come see items in their collection and do they go to the farmstead is that where the museum is located are there different opportunities for them to to experience some of those things yet so we do have some questions on do you have the farmstead which we rotate through right now we have some historic photographs on display as well as our permanent exhibition which is pieces of our albert einstein holdings and also an exhibition on john von neumann who is one of the thinkers behind the modern computer so if you go on our web site you will always be able to see what what is on view exhibition wise but if you have particular research questions or if you're interested in the history of your own home or your neighborhood we also has extensive collections off site that can can help you with those kinds of questions we have over eight hundred different meanings of collections some of which are many boxes large and they range anything from letters from businesses in the late eighteenth century to records from ballet schools to letters the entire stockton family papers it really is a comprehensive paper record of princeton history so if you have questions about things that you think we might have in our collection that are not on view you can always send us an e mail or give us a call and we'd be happy to pull things for you that might be relevant and we're always just happy to satisfy people's curiosity as well so never hesitate we have we're here as a resource and we want people to use the collection that we preserve for the community right now i know that that in the work that you're doing princeton has a very very long very storied very diverse history as you look to have people engage with historical society come up to museums of the collection go on field trips and really consider consider a public history that you talked about what do you hope they take away as they learn more about princeton history and are community and i think that there are several things that i hope people take away from the historical experiences they they get with us and i think they're sort of twofold i think that there are there are personal changes that i hope occur and then there are community changes that i hope occur the personal changes i think are what we were discussing before is in terms of i believe that learning the history of a place but also becoming a an informed consumer of history in general which happens the more history you consume at the local state or national level  makes everyone a more critical and more informed and more respectful citizen of the town that you're in the state that you're in the country that you're in or the world that you're in learning history helps us to think about perspective it helps us to think about context it helps us to think about all these important things that help us parse information and help us relate to other people especially people who are different from our own ourselves i always say but history is empathy in macro sm and that what we practice on a human level which is you know i might be different from you but i can have a conversation with you in that they were very different but as an example and the way that i can put those differences aside and have a conversation is by understanding that we're coming from different places and by understanding our own backgrounds which in reality is is undergirded by history and when we are able to understand context in that way and understand perspective in that way it helps us interact at a personal level but also at the global level which is so important as skills to have as will citizens or as local citizens so i think that i hope that we were playing a small role in helping build those skills at the interpersonal level but i also hope that we are and i know that history institutions like ours help to build distinctive communities and help to build a sense of place that really doesn't help the community vitality and i believe that the work that history organizations do in forming people about the history of the places where they live and by helping people feel connected to the history of the places where they live that we are all part of this narrative of prints and history that is so diverse and longstanding that helps increase investment in a community both physically emotionally financially everyone is more likely to keep the resources here of time and energy and money when they feel connected to this place and i feel like we're playing an important role in helping people feel connected to princeton using history not as the thing of the past but as a measuring tool for today extent exactly i think that history organizations have a big role to play in community development and and that is sort of my vision going forward is saying that that should be our role and then we have a lot to do there so well is a thank you so much for joining us tonight it's been a great pleasure to have you on our show and it's wonderful oh it's just see where our alumni go from princeton high school and from other schools and the things that they do very smart on the court we're glad to have you know our community and i do and best of luck with everything he's so much thank you all for joining us this evening and we look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of this week an education