At a recent conference on African Atlantic Culture, History and Performance, one of the keynote speakers encouraged participants to consider how we deploy history. While the word deploy can mean simply “use,” it also has connotations that suggest a more deliberate and even strategic function. As we face new questions concerning open universities and universal access, how do those possibilities change the way we as scholars imagine “deploying” our history and our methodologies? How do we envision the audiences for those new venues deploying history in their own turn? What is the difference between teaching our students to deploy/use history vs. simply absorb/know it? If there is a difference? How might it change the ways we approach our pedagogy and our research? Should it?
{ 5 comments }
