September 2023
Virtual spaces are gaining popularity with the public as technology continues to advance and become more accessible. In recent years, public historians have made use of this opportunity to create historical virtual spaces, in the forms of digital museums or exhibits, storyboards, and video games. These spaces can have the potential to provide the substance necessary to foster complex historical thought in their audiences. To achieve this potential, virtual spaces, such as the Tenement Museum of New York’s Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic, must affectively engage the audience, while simultaneously reminding them of the mediation of the history being presented. [1] One historian who has investigated how these different forms of history produce historical knowledge is Alison Landsberg, in her text entitled Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. [2] Landsberg leans heavily on the concept of affective engagement — those moments “when we are moved or touched or made to feel uncomfortable”, and “we are prodded to think and make sense of that experience.” [3] When these engagements occur within a historical context or frame, “new historical insights can be produced” by the public. [4] Furthermore, she argues that for historical knowledge to be produced through these forms, the viewers must have a sense of mediation — that is, the audience must be able to understand that they are viewing a mediated, or arbitrated, form of history, and thus are not fully immersed within the narrative. [5] This creates points of friction in the thought process of viewers, fostering the production of historical thought guided by the messages being conveyed.
Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic depicts the community response to contagious illnesses within the tenement communities of the Lower East Side of Manhattan from the late 1800s to the 1990s. Leaning heavily on narratives that engage the viewer in an affective manner, this digital storyboard places the spotlight on five former residents and their families who ultimately perished from contagious diseases. The narrative commences with period-related context regarding tenements and public sanitation in New York City, explaining that the backyards of these buildings can offer historians and the public strong glimpses into the world of sanitation and public health during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The spotlight then turns to the Tuberculosis crisis through the story of John and Caroline Schneider, German immigrant salon-keepers. The text discusses that there was nowhere for them to turn for treatment, and thus relied on their community and family for support during their bouts with the illness. Ultimately the couple died during the last decade of the 1800s. Within the next section, the exhibit discusses the reforms and advances made in public sanitation — bacteria was found to be the cause of illness, contrary to the moralist theory that pervaded public health at the time. This advancement led to many reforms in public health throughout the city’s urban area.
After this discussion, the exhibit’s attention moves to the Influenza of 1918 in the context of a Yiddish family, the Burinescus. Jacob, the patriarch, was highly active in multiple fraternal societies and drew upon their help throughout his deadly bout with the illness. Using oral histories from Burinescu’s grand-daughter, the section brings his story to life, painting the family as stricken by the death of Jacob — at the end, the text reminds the audience that Burinescu’s story is one of the thirty-three thousand who perished from the Influenza epidemic in New York. [6] Like the sections regarding Tuberculosis, the subsequent section discusses how New York City combatted Influenza, starting from poor response to a seemingly over-vigilant, near surveillance-level of monitoring.
The last contagious illness that is brought up is the HIV/AIDS pandemic through the life of a homosexual Puerto Rican couple, Jose Beniquez Santiago and Crispin Ramos, who lived in the Lower East Side through the 1980s and 1990s and perished from the virus in the latter decade. Unlike the previous individuals and families discussed, this couple received little to no community outreach during their time of illness, primarily due to the large stigma surrounding homosexuality as well as the HIV/AIDS virus. The following section, once again, brings context to the couple’s story, detailing the rising panic and subsequent grass-roots activism regarding the virus, leading to much more effective treatment options in the contemporary era. The exhibit concludes by discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining that like the examples utilized, marginalized communities experience pandemics at a much worse level than non-marginalized communities. Though we do not see equitable investiture in combatting this issue for all communities, it is within the margins of society that grass-roots activism is catalyzed and birthed, commencing the fight to garner the attention necessary.
Though the Tenement Museum’s virtual space is text-heavy, it does frequently utilize photographs and GIFs to tug at the emotions of the viewer. These photographs, coupled with the extensive discussions around family and home life, give the viewer an affective manner of engaging with the material. As Landsberg compellingly argues, this is an essential step in the production of historical knowledge and thought for virtual spaces, for the audience can identify with the narrative at hand, thus being affected by it personally. Furthermore, each section that is focused on an individual tugs at the audience’s emotions through extensive familial and community discussion, filling the audience with sympathy and perhaps empathy. The way the prose carries this out leaves the audience little choice but to feel for these families. Through these emotionally charged features, Beyond Statistics certainly checks the box for the category of affective engagement.
Though the exhibit is noticeably designed to rouse emotions and engage the audience in an affective manner, it does not provide full immersion into the history that is being discussed. Mediation is highly visible within the format of both the exhibit and the website itself — while sections organize the material, there is an option to skip around through the different sections, breaking the narrative into pieces. Furthermore, there is a banner at the top of the screen showcasing messages from the physical museum itself; on the day this website was visited, a message regarding the status of the elevators was running across the website’s header throughout the exhibit’s experience. These distractions continuously remind the viewer that this is a website, and that they are not fully immersed within the history being conveyed. In accordance with Landsberg’s argument, this enables the audience to juxtapose their affective engagement with mediation, fostering historical knowledge and thought.
Thus, in accordance with Landsberg’s arguments, the Tenement Museum’s virtual space achieves its potential in the production of historical thought and knowledge. Through its descriptive imagery and usage of familial and period context, the audience becomes affectively engaged with the historical material being presented — the authors seemingly intended the audience to feel sympathetic for the families and individuals who lost their lives to contagious illnesses. Furthermore, the physical construction of the website is a constant reminder that the information is being mediated, and one cannot escape these reminders throughout their engagement with the materials. This pulls the viewer away from full immersion in the history being presented, enabling the creation of friction points between the past and present. Through the creation of these friction points, virtual historical spaces such as Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic can be an immensely powerful tool in the field of public history.
Bibliography
Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic. Virtual Exhibit at the Tenement Museum in New York City website, n.d. https://www.tenement.org/beyond-statistics-living-in-a-pandemic/
Landsberg, Allison. 2015. Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.umsl.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=e000xna&AN=1015203&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
[1] Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic. Virtual Exhibit at the Tenement Museum in New York City website, n.d. https://www.tenement.org/beyond-statistics-living-in-a-pandemic/
[2] Alison Landsberg. 2015. Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press.
[3] Landsberg, Engaging the Past. 15.
[4] Landsberg, Engaging the Past. 15,16.
[5] Landsberg, Engaging the Past. 2.
[6] Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic. Tenement Museum, New York
Dalton G. King 