History curricula in high schools, after reform in 1932, published in „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne”(1933-1939)

When Poland regained independence it was crucial to unite school systems of all polish lands under one governance, as well as to prepare projects of school acts, that would apply to all country. Most important was to unify system, its organization, language of lectures etc. in the whole country. In accordance with Ustawa o ustroju szkolnictwa dated 11th March 1932 school system was to be based on seven-year 3rd degree public school. It was assumed, that schools would prepare talented children and adolescents to promotion from one type of school to the other, as well as to promotion from lower degree schools to higher degree schools. „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne” were one of the journals published between 1933 and 1939 by Polish Historical Society for history teaching. Editor-in-chief was Kazimierz Tyszkowski, who after 1937 functioned together with Antoni Knot. Articles concerning teaching of history in secondary school, especially concerning introduction of new programs, were published in „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne”. Taking into account the need to organize school system after more than 100-years dependence from invaders governance, should not be surprising, that it was developed fast, and not always proposed and implemented solutions were supported by the public, teachers and experts, what can be noticed when analyzing content of particular articles.

History curricula in high schools, after reform in 1932, published in „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne”(1933-1939)

History curricula in high schools, after reform in 1932, published in „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne”(1933-1939) In interwar period Polish government concentrate first of all on organizing again state structures, what impacted situation of common education. New acts and ministerial decrees that regulated each level of education were published. It was also a time of preparation and deployment of new curricula. This article focuses on analysis of texts concernig introduction of new program of teaching history in high schools from journal „Wiadomości Historyczno-Dydaktyczne” published by Polish Historical Society (Polskie Towarzystwa Historyczne) for history teaching. The number of articles is not large due to late introduction of the program in schools - it’s in 1937. Article concludes, that authors of given texts concentrated mainly on three issues, concerning: schedule of the program, provided content and also changes, that should be made within curricula for middle, as well as, for high schools. Keywords: curricula, history, high school, interwar period

Missionary theology and the peopling of pre-Columbian America: John Oxenbridge’s “A plea for the dumb Indian” (ca. 1666)

John Oxenbridge was a 17th-century Puritan minister who lived in England, Bermuda, Suriname, Barbados, and New England. During his residence in Suriname, a short-lived English colony, he wrote a missionary treatise he entitled “A plea for the dumb Indian.” The work was never published and survives partially in non-digitalized manuscript form at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. One of the intact portions of the manuscript is a discussion of the settlement of pre-Columbian America. Oxenbridge held that the Native Americans were descended from ancient Scythians, the semi-nomadic and “uncivilized” peoples of the vast Eurasian Steppe, who had entered America through “Anian,” an early modern designation for the region around the Bering Strait. He also thought that two other peoples later settled in pre-Columbian America: Welsh adventurers sailed across the Atlantic but soon intermarried with the Native Americans and disappeared as a distinct people, and some of the lost tribes of Israel entered the New World through Anian. These lost Israelites still survived and continued to observe the Mosaic Law. They never intermarried with the Native Americans; however, they passed on a “tincture of Israels customs” to their Indian neighbors. Oxenbridge’s discussion of the peopling of pre-Columbian America may seem like an antiquarian curiosity of little interest to historians of Christian missions. But for him it remained relevant to the present day. The Welsh migration, which he thought predated Spanish and French colonization, legitimated the English imperial claim in America. More importantly, the presence of lost Israelites in Scythian America would facilitate the conversion of the Native Americans.

Fr. Karl Urban (1864–1923) – Researcher of the History of Upper Silesia

The aim of the article is to present the person and scientific achievements of Fr. Karl Urban (1864–1923), in the years 1899–1923 a priest at Sadów in the Lubliniec deanery. He himself – being the son of Carl Urban (1836–1922), a teacher in Upper Silesian schools, the author of a few books combining the subjects of pedagogy and history – he was engaged in scientific activity almost all his life. He published some of his research works in the Silesian scientific journal: „Oberschlesische Heimat. Zeitschrift des OberschlesischenGeschichtsvereins”, and he was actively participating in the activities of the Upper Silesian Historical Society founded in 1904. The members of that society focused their work mainly on the history of local communities, creating accounts contributing to the synthetic history of Upper Silesia. The preliminary archival query found the first articles of Fr. Urban, concerning the history of the lands of Lubliniec and Koszęcin. The author shares the preliminary results of his research, the aim of which is to publish a book about this forgotten researcher of local history on the hundredth anniversary of his death.

Holding Place: Resistance, Reframing, and Relationality in the Representation of Indigenous History

This article explores questions of commemoration in Canadian history from the perspective of two Indigenous historians: one who has engaged in public history through performance art (Anderson) and another who is building a career studying public history (Groat). Our interest lies not only in commemorative acts related to Canadian history that we must resist and reframe but also in questions of how Indigenous peoples might hold place through our own commemorative practices. The article is shaped around recollections of performance art that Anderson has conducted with the public history troupe, the Kika’ige Historical Society – work that evolved in response to celebrations of Canada’s sesquicentennial. We argue that, as demonstrated by the Kika’ige Historical Society, Indigenous peoples have resisted, reframed, and engaged in processes of relationality to create new ways of sharing Indigenous histories. We document Canadian commemorative monuments and acts that have invited resistance from Indigenous peoples. This resistance started in the early twentieth century and has increased exponentially in recent years. Indigenous peoples are now reframing colonial informed commemoration and asserting their own practices that include renaming sites in Indigenous languages, engaging ceremony and public art, and calling for policy change. We celebrate contemporary Indigenous commemorations as relational practices that distinguish themselves by their engagement with the land and the integration of human, natural, and spirit worlds.

"A Snake Charmer with a Camera" : Nina Leen's Contributions to Life Magazine: 1940-1972

Nina Leen (c. 1909–1995) was a Russian-born émigré photographer who worked for Life magazine from 1940–1972, contributing photographs to stories published in 374 issues. Leen’s photography received little attention following her death, as her working method, oeuvre, and character depart from those of the archetypal photojournalist. Using digital reproductions of Leen’s photographic prints and negatives from the Life Photo Collection, a full run of Life, and archival documents housed in the Time Inc. Records at the New-York Historical Society, this thesis evaluates Leen’s contributions to both Life magazine and the field of photojournalism. An introduction, literature survey, and methodological description contextualize Leen’s career. Two appendices and a list of figures present images selected in this thesis, and the issues and sections of Life in which Leen’s photographs were published. Three chapters discuss the beginning of Leen’s career and her typical approach to magazine photography, and two chapters analyze the years leading up to Life’s conclusion as a weekly magazine, when Leen held more command over her output.

A collection under construction: trans-versing access with the Tranny Fest Collection

The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, formerly known as Tranny Fest, was the first trans film festival in North America, having been founded in 1997. The Tranny Fest Collection (2006-26) is held by the GLBT Historical Society Archives & Museum, and contains one hundred and sixty-nine video and audiotapes, which have gone unprocessed since their deposit in 2006. This thesis examines the barriers to access faced by the Collection primarily using a radical empathy archival framework, as theorized by Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, in order to reveal the power dynamics at play when archiving intersectionally marginalized collections and the resulting ethical responsibilities. Through an exploration of the Collection’s dubious legal ownership, copyright complications and preservation issues, this thesis aims to provide solutions to improve the overall accessibility of the tapes in the Tranny Fest Collection, and similarly marginalized collections.