Hi-Story

History is often seen as the dust on the cover of old books. Who, like me, enjoys the smell of aged paper and the tactile experience of crawling in the past through the pages of old books, can appreciate the grey layer on the volumes, looking behind the apparent immobility on the shelves. A world of memories and lives opens to the reader willing to walk through the dusty covers.

However, if you see the dust, often you perceive a simple and plain boredom.

Public history has the challenging task of interact with the people, I mean the normal ones that are not populating the corridors of Academia. It has to swipe the dust. The paper should leave the stage to other actors that can talk to the public in a more direct, tangible and interesting way, like a piece of furniture (still boring?!), images depicting the life in the past (oh c’mon that is better!), some two hundred years old gossip (I knew that you would have liked this!).

In this blog I will record my attempt to learn the language of this History.

Being a Blog by definition is personal, subjective and time-related. I will try to be loyal to these capital sins of the academic world. If possible, I will use my past as graphic artist, art history student and pun enthusiast to hide my hunchback and grey hair of present historian, hoping to move and stir the argument with some fresh air.

Above all, I’m learning here, so please be patient and pretend to enjoy it. Ah, I almost forgot: I am Italian, so please forgive me some grammar stumbles.