There were many fascinating questions to keep track of in Alison Isenberg’s presentation about her work on Trenton, not least what it means for a historian to be writing about the juxtaposition of archives and memories—and to be feeding back what she finds in the archive to the people who were there, and writing about how they react. So, the question of how many buildings burned that night in April 1968, and the wail of fire engines everywhere. It can transform a community’s narrative to learn that there were only four burning buildings, and that the engines crossed and recrossed the city in pursuit of dozens of false alarms. How to fold that transformation into the story as you tell it?
I was also struck by the way she talked about her collaboration with Purcell Carson. Alison has a respect for the power of well-chosen film footage that bordered on fear: how it can be manipulated, and how the placement of a powerful vignette can drive a narrative, and an argument. Is this effect so much more powerful than analogous manipulations of prose? Film and video are sometimes called “hotter” media than print. Does that heat make them risker for doing history—especially given Alison’s self-professed disciplinary refusal to speculate, absent documentary proof? I may be exaggerating her position a bit—but I think it will be very interesting to hold these questions in mind when we talk to Ruha Benjamin next time about her work in the Just Data Lab. The representation of information, and its social justice ramifications, will be much at stake then.
4 replies on “The Trenton Project”
I really enjoyed Prof. Isenberg’s comments on speculation, memory, and integrity in her research. Communal memory restructures the past — and historical investigation can reshape it yet again, as evidenced by the example of the Trenton fires. But this reciprocity between academia and community requires trust, on both sides. In response to Aliya’s question about the distinction between her work and investigative journalism, Prof. Isenberg argued that she built trust with her sources by introducing herself as a researcher and not as a journalist because they knew that she’d stick with the story, and commit to telling it fully. What is it about the nature of research, and the type of writing we read for this session, that instills this unique form of trust in its subjects? I certainly felt the deep personal link between writer and community while reading the chapter. I wonder how this might be different in the creation of a documentary, a distinction we touched on during the discussion. I might imagine a feeling of intrusion or exposure that comes with cameras that might not surface for a notebook and an interview. I came away from the session with a new sense of how historical research constructs and often remodels memory, redistributing misplaced blame and relieving burdens on communities.
Professor Isenberg is my thesis advisor, so I’ve grown to appreciate her advice on writing in our weekly meetings. Personally, I found her description of writing, unlike anything we’ve ever discussed. As I work on an incredibly sensitive and topic research project regarding Native American boarding schools during the assimilationist period, I understand the urge to “write a novel.” I recall Carlo Ginzburg’s purpose of writing The Cheese and the Worms as a “redemptive” work, for a figure like Menocchio to get the stage that was denied to him by the inquisition.
But I also must grapple with what that means as someone who is writing on a topic in which I do not share the identity of those people who I am writing about and who have been systematically denied an archive by governmental forces. I want to return to the question: What does it mean to write history like a novel?
For the time being, I’m unsure of the answer, so let me turn to one of the discussion points that resonated with me most: Professor Dolven’s question to Professor Isenberg about the danger of depicting history through visual media. I agree that, to some extent, a documentary film or similar genres can never capture the minutiae of historiographical texts.
But, in the same breath, I question the notion that visual media cannot engage a wide audience in a truthful and accurate manner. Without a doubt, our current technology has inundated us with vast amounts of information, some of which is most certainly false and ruinous to our understanding of the past. While technology has broadened the channels through which disinformation flows, historiography has not been prone to its own eras of disinformation: 114 years ago, the Daily Princetonian advertised a contest by the United Daughters of the Confederacy on the best paper on the American South. In other words, we must worry about danger; however, the shift to visual media does not, in my opinion, mark a distinct or special chapter in dangers regarding the work of the historical discipline.
I believe Professor Isenberg represents a historian at the cutting edge of the profession, actively considering how work makes us “feel.” Nowadays historians face many pressing questions, most of which have been posed by technology: How do we combat disinformation? How do we navigate through the piles of digital sources? How do we delineate a research topic with so much information? How do we write about them? The continued success of history as a discipline and a civic tool, as I think Professor Isenberg work’s so clearly elucidates, depends on its ability to adapt to emerging technologies and genres to connect with as many people as possible.
As Prof. Isenberg noted, she is often not asked about her feelings. This was surprising to me given how artfully emotional the chapter was, and in considering the close relationship Prof. Isenberg cultivates with the community about which she writes. This became clear when she spoke about the impact of the story walks on those whose lives they were written about. I thought the distinction she drew between the craft of emotion in film versus historical writing was fascinating as someone with no film background, especially in the significance of Purcell Carson’s ability to use sound clips in her film. I appreciated Prof. Isenberg’s last question, about what resonated with us in thinking about campus today. Abigail brought up an astute example in the barber shop pilot program, which illustrated for me how important it is to feel history.
During our discussion with Professor Isenberg, I was struck by how many of the incidents of the 1960s Trenton uprising mirrored our contemporary moment. Professor Isenberg discussed how student protestors were painted as ‘looters’ by newspapers even though only four establishments in Trenton were burnt down and most protestors were peaceful. Nearly every frontpage headline in the presentation we saw used some form of the word ‘loot,’ showing the ubiquity of this narrative. This mirrors the rhetoric used against Black Lives Matter protestors in 2020, most infamously in then-President Donald Trump’s tweet: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
I appreciated Professor Isenberg’s question about how reading her research on Princeton’s history altered our personal relationship with this institution. Some of us realised that we don’t reflect on the university’s history often even though we spend virtually every day here during the academic year. I noticed a pattern in Princeton’s publicity around any progressive initiative it introduces. The programme Professor Isenberg’s chapter examines, which brought Black high school students to Princeton for summer classes and activities, was extensively documented by Princeton. Campus is currently covered in posters and messaging about the climate-friendly structures Princeton is building. The steps of Frist Campus Center show a timeline of Princeton’s green achievements, with the last milestone announcing that Princeton will achieve carbon-neutrality by 2046. As in 1964, the publicity campaign seems to have outraced outcomes.
Although Princeton meticulously recorded the programme, the participating students’ experiences were left out of the record, with one student saying he felt misled about Princeton’s diversity (Isenberg 3). It has been 58 years since Carl Jones said this, yet his sentiment feels relatable. Princeton is careful to include Black students in promotional pictures, but only 9% of the recently admitted Class of 2026 is Black. This is lower than the Black community’s national demographic share (13.6%), and lower than Harvard’s and Yale’s figures for 2026 (15.2% and 13% respectively).
After Harlan Joseph’s shooting, Robert Goheen, the president of the university at the time, wrote a letter to Joseph’s family grieving his death. This letter is not in Mudd Manuscript Library, Professor Isenberg said, but in the family’s scrapbook at home. This raises questions of what gets included and excluded from the university’s official archive, and it made me grateful for Professor Isenberg’s research, which locates the histories left out of the university’s record.
Even as this session made me think critically about Princeton, it reminded me that the university’s institutional power can be used for good. Professor Isenberg’s class visited the site of the proposed Harlan Joseph Peace Park, which reinvigorated the process for its establishment. The on-campus ‘performance walks’ and exhibition in Wilcox dining hall are further examples of how Princeton’s resources can be used to foreground the stories of Black undergraduates, whom the university did not admit until 1962 (Isenberg 3).