Guided Argument Historical Marker Text Essay
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Assignment 1: Guided Argument
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Assignment 1 Guided Argument: Historical Marker
Text Revision
“Guided Argument” means that all the outside sources for the essay
are supplied for you. This way we can talk about how you are using
the sources as evidence for specific claims you might make as you
construct this argument essay.
How Does the Past Shape the Present?
As Alderman asserts in “History by the Spoonful,” the U.S. has a tradition of
“narrating the past in consensual rather than critical terms” (356). Consen-
sus tends to round down to the least controversial version of a narrative,
while a critical narrative dares to welcome marginalized points of view and
almost always illuminates narratives that have been hidden by dominant
cultural knowledge. This tradition has led to an avoidance of certain truths
about racism, inequality and civil rights. Your task is to bring critical con-
text to consensual history presented in a Historical Marker Text (HMT) of
your choice.
In this assignment, we will consider the genre of the HMT to explore the
ways these texts frame history and the impact that framing has on our un-
derstanding of historical events and people. After doing your research by
reading the required sources, you will decide upon a thesis—an argument—
for an essay that focuses on one HMT of your choosing in which you analyze
the content of the text, the discourse about history it constructs, the
rhetoric employed, and what is and is not made visible about the historical
landscape it marks. Finally, you will argue how and why you would revise it
to include that missing information. You will also be doing some historical
research about the site being marked so that you can fill in what you find
has been left out.What is not included is as important as what is!
Assignment 1: Guided Argument
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Above is an example of a HMT from Lake Ronkonkoma, here on Long Is-
land. It is a category of HMT that the New York Folklore Society has labeled
“Legends & Lore,” but it also marks a landscape with a very long history
that reaches back to before European settlers laid eyes on the lake.
How do you interpret the above text? What kinds of information are offered
to the reader, and what information, historical and otherwise, might be left
out? Note when the marker was placed so that you can contextualize the
cultural moment in which it was created. This is a different moment from
the historical one being referenced, and this is important to notice, as it
tells us about contemporary knowledge of history.
What ideas about Long Island’s indigenous tribal nations are reflected
here? How has the general consciousness about Settler-Indigenous relation-
Assignment 1: Guided Argument
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ship changed or not changed since this marker was created? What frame of
reference is invoked by placing the phrase “Legends and Lore” on a typical
historical landscape marker?
We might suppose that the image of an Indigenous woman as portrayed
here may be framing ideas about Indigenous women in general that do not
give visitors to this historical site a truly informed, accurate and nuanced
picture of the original inhabitants of Long Island—of any gender. What ideas
are reflected here in this marker’s rhetoric? What attitudes toward gender,
and toward indigeneity?
Does this HMT give historical information that is useful to understanding all
our shared histories as visitors to the site? Does it reinscribe stereotypes?
How would you revise this HMT to be more inclusive, and what images of
the Indigenous tribal nations from this area would you want to represent if
you had the authority to revise the text?
“What visions of the past are given voice (or silenced)?
Whose history is remembered or forgotten?” (Dwyer and
Alderman 358)
“[L]andscapes of memory hold the seeds of their unmaking and can become
important arenas for debating dominant social ideas about the past as well
as
writing alternative, counter-memories into the public realm (Dwyer and Al-
derman 2008).”
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Assignment 1: Guided Argument
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How is knowledge created by the conquerors?
The above HMT, posted by the Lake Ronkonkoma Heritage Association, ad-
dresses only one narrative of local Long Island history, what Dwyer and Al-
derman call a “white-centric history” (Dwyer and Alderman 2008). What
other histories of “arrowheads” might there be? And why is it problematic
that this historical marker focuses only on the recreational collection of
those arrowheads by a group of 20th Century men, and not on the people
who created and used those arrowheads in their daily lives? The image this
historical marker projects
lacks a critical lens
because it centers contem-
porary “collectors” and leaves out the fuller narrative of people who created
and used those arrowheads in their daily lives.
A single historical narrative told from one group’s point of view is never a
complete one, and it is almost always the dominant group in a place and
time that gets to write the historical narrative that most of us believe is
“just the way things are/were.” As Alderman argues, in many cases, there is
a compelling need to “narrate the historical identity of traditionally
marginalized social actors and groups” (357). He goes on to offer an impor-
tant question: “to what extent do commemorative silences about the histori-
cal culture, [such as this marker exhibits], perpetuate these unequal power
relations into the future?” (359).
The Assignment
5 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman Type, MLA format-
ted , and MLA Works Cited page.
Questions to ask about your Historical Marker Text research begin with this
important one:
How can I revise the text to “complic[ate] collective mem-
ory and privileged traditions of remembering” history?
(Dwyer and Alderman 356).
Other questions include:
*What and/or who does the marker (HMT) commemorate?
*Include relevant dates so that your reader knows the historical period ref-
erenced in the marker, AND the date the marker was created if that is avail-
able.
*What larger cultural or social group’s story or stories are being told in the
marker text?
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*What individual person, place or event is commemorated?
*Are/Were there people who inhabited the social landscape that are not rep-
resented in the marker text? Are there important events that are not repre-
sented? Why are these people and events
missing from the HMT?
*How can you revise the text of this HMT to create a more accurate history?
Your essay should be divided into three parts; two of those are found in the
article, “History by the Spoonful” in North Carolina: The Textual Politics of
State Highway Historical Markers,” by Derek H. Alderman, published in the
journal
Southeastern Geographer
in 2012. You don’t need to label these
parts, but your organization should follow this order:
1.Introduction: Give your reader an overview of what you plan to argue—
otherwise known as a thesis—Here is an example:
The NY Folklore Society’s historical marker “Indian Princess of Lake
Ronkonkoma” contains inaccurate and biased stereotypes of Indige-
nous women that erase accurate history of the tribal nations who
originally lived in this area. In this essay I advocate for a revised his-
torical marker text to replace the one currently displayed. The cur-
rent text tells the history of this landscape through the lens of domi-
nant White culture which ignores a more truthful and complex story
about Lake Ronkonkoma’s Indigenous past. The new text will focus
on Lake Ronkonkoma’s social and cultural importance to the thir-
teen tribal nations that made the lake a sacred center of their lives.
A more complete history of Lake Ronkonkoma will help visitors to
the site understand how White settler presence impacted the origi-
nal inhabitants.
2.Textual analysis: Give your analysis of what the text is saying about the
people and events it is commemorating. This should include a rhetorical
analysis of the language.
Construct an argument for your beliefs about how
the text perpetuates historical erasures, inaccuracies and/or biases.
3.Textual intervention: Propose and argue for a revision that is more histori-
cally accurate and inclusive of neglected counter-histories. Present the new
text you suggest with supporting arguments for why the changes are neces-
sary for a more equitable historical narrative. How might the new text im-
pact our general knowledge about a historical people? How does the new
text complicate the existing narrative?
You will use the group of sources in the readings folder as your main critical
research. At least three of those should appear as support for your claims.
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You may also use other sources that you come across as you do the histori-
cal research, such as websites.
ALL THREE OF THESE OUTLINED SECTIONS MUST BE IN YOUR
HMT ESSAY
You will need to have all five sources read by Wednesday, 2/8. Using
other sources that you find outside of these five is allowed, but you
must include 3-4 out of the 5 that are listed in the course calendar.
Write summaries of the arguments put forth by the writers in at
least two of those sources.
If you feel unsure about how to identify an ar-
gument, pinpoint what you think a particular writer wants their readers to
believe. We will work on this in class. There are inevitably multiple right an-
swers to this puzzle. Bring a written summary of Derek Alderman’s argu-
ment in “History by the Spoonful” to class on Wed. 2/8.
First Draft: Due midnight Sun. 2/19. Final Draft due midnight Sun.
2/26.
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