Dr. Samantha Cutrara:        Julian, Hello. Thank you so much for responding to my invitation to talk about Juneteenth, especially in relation to the social revolution that is happening right now. I’m really excited to talk with you about these ideas of pandemic pedagogy. But before we begin, do you want to introduce yourself?

Julian Chambliss:        Sure. My name is Julian Chambliss. I’m a professor of English at Michigan State University. I’m also the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum and I’m a core faculty in something called the Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research here at MSU, which goes by the acronym CEDAR. And I’m also the co-director of the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab here at MSU.

SC:        You know, what’s been really cool about this series is to be able to see all these like interdisciplinary ways that we’re bringing ideas of history together, and that’s one of the reasons why I was really drawn to your work because of this like interdisciplinary public history, English history everything together. So thank you again.

JC:        Oh, no, thank you for asking me. Happy to be here.

SC:        So let’s start with the first question. I ask everyone in the “Pandemic Pedagogy” series three questions, but the context as we were talking about has shifted and changed so much.

So the first question is whether or not the ideas of history have changed at all for you during COVID? For me, there has been some kind of shifting and I’m much more aware of, for example, marking particular moments in history because of the fact that we aren’t kind of organized in the classroom or maybe in with community groups. So have your ideas about history changed at all? And again, we got in touch about Juneteenth. I don’t know if this is like a good time for you to talk about kind of that history related to these times.

JC:        Well, you know, I do think that the importance of history is really central to my thinking right now. I mean, I’ve thought about that a lot. And when you were sort of like inquiring about Juneteenth, I really thought like, well, that’s really a pivotal event that sort of fits into a pattern that in some ways explains the landscape that we’re in right now and in terms like this was a systematic failure on the part of people in charge to sort of deliver on the ideologies that they articulate, right? And the consequences for people.

So I think that history becomes very important. In the case of something like Juneteenth, I think about that in part because the idea of this holiday that’s articulated by African-Americans that most White people don’t know about, most White Americans never heard of Juneteenth, but it’s very, very important to African-Americans. Really, it’s pivoting on this idea that African-American’s celebration of freedom is forestalled, right? Because the actual event, really the sort of like the moment that Black people find out that they’re free even though like legally, they already had been three years before. And this idea that the right that you have could be forestalled by forces out in the world and what do you have to do to sort of like become aware of them and sort of achieve them, and sort of celebrate them and make them, you know, I think is a recurring theme in terms of like the American historical experience and really the western hemisphere’s experience and these questions of colonialism and oppression of power that are connected to these moments of like when people try to make real the theories of freedom and the theories of citizenship really do I think matter a great deal because how do they do that, right?

In the case of Juneteenth, one of the things about that holiday is that it’s connected to what was for many years for African-Americans public displays of citizenship. Like they would march through the streets. They would have these huge celebrations like emancipation day in Juneteenth. Like these are holidays that celebrated citizenship and a kind of public identity as a citizen in defiance of oppression and systemic erasure in the public sphere, like this effort on the part [inaudible 0:05:42.7] racist institutions and racist individuals [inaudible 0:05:48.3*besides] people to marginalize them. And being in public spaces demonstrating marching through the streets, having parades was an important part of like establishing the parameters of a real citizenship, like a material citizenship [inaudible 0:06:03.2*met when you had to walk the streets.]

And so it’s no surprise to me that I see people in a moment where they’re trying to articulate a better vision of freedom that they’re walking in the streets, right? Like that makes actually perfect [inaudible 0:06:16.8] historical standpoint.

SC:        Well, and I think to, you know, people were saying when the protest first started like, “Well, we still have COVID. Like why are you gathering in groups?” But I think the way that you’re articulating like this legacy of like identifying the I am a citizen. Like you can’t not see me. And as a collective, that’s more important. That’s more powerful.

JC:        Yeah. And I think that the thing about COVID and the danger that it poses, does it pose a greater danger than a systematic erasure of your person, right?

JC:        And I think for a lot of people, the idea that they’re already being erased in a slow steady way by a system that’s indifferent and uncaring, that allows for systemic deficits to negatively affect their lives every day up to and including you might be randomly killed is more dangerous, right? Like COVID as a virus, it doesn’t really want to kill Black people more than White people, it’s just able to because of all the other horrible things that have happened in society, right?

So for Black people, COVID is just another example of how the system is systemically trying to hurt them or failing to live up to its obligations to them. And I think that language of failure of the system to live up its obligations resonates not just simply with Black people, but also as you can see, when you look at these crowds, it’s not just Black people marching through the streets. There’s a lot of people that recognize that in some ways our assumptions about what the system is supposed to deliver, it’s failing to do that and it’s failing very deliberately. Like it’s a choice, right? It’s a choice for the system not to provide healthcare to everybody.

It’s a choice in the context of United States for us not to have a social safety net similar to most industrialized world. And the consequences of that choice are really clear because as bad as COVID has been in other parts of the world, arguably it’s worse here because of those choices around not protecting people at a fundamental level, right? And at the very bottom of that heap of like negative choices are people of color, right? So they die more and they suffer more, but other people are also suffering from that kind of indifference.

SC:        One of the really strong themes that has come up through the “Pandemic Pedagogy” series is how the pandemic has really demonstrated or allowed us to really like not ignore the way that our systems don’t function for everyone and they weren’t designed to function for everyone. And like in the series, we’ve talked a lot about K-12 history education in particular and about like, well, how are students now going to be able to — like how can we even pretend that students are going to have an equitable learning experience? Like we can’t even pretend that. And I see that a lot of the resistance right now is to kind of what you’re saying like demanding a system that can better — that can live up to the promise that it keeps saying that it’s making.

JC:        Right. And I think that that too becomes like a historical question, right? Why is it that the system has failed to deliver on somebody’s fundamental things around citizenship? And I often think about this in terms of the sort of fundamental failures because United States is a highly ideological place. I mean, we really sort of built a lot on norms, not rules, right?

JC:        And so one of the things about the situation is that why we don’t have rules that guarantee X, Y, and Z where in a lot of other countries, they do? Like they have these rules that make it a requirement for the government to operate in such a way, and we [inaudible 0:11:10.8] to sort of shy away from that.

In part of the I think the consequences of that are very much to people in power saying, “Oh, don’t worry, this system will lift every boat. You don’t have to require it to do so,” right? So things like the minimum wage or things like healthcare, there were moments in the past, in the historical past, where people have banded together and really pressed for these systemic changes have often been forestalled by people in power saying, “Well, we don’t need this,” or as you see the day, people say like, “We’ll you’re asking the wrong way,” right? Like you’re too demanding of the system to deliver the people the fruits of citizenship.

But that’s almost never really true and those moments where we sort of embrace these changes, some of those norms, like some of those practices, Americans don’t really question, right? We don’t question Social Security, but from a historical standpoint, that was really controversial what was introduced, that it was only introduced because we’re in the midst of the worst at the time, the world’s global economic downturn [inaudible 0:12:29.5*emperor.]

And so to respond to the danger posed by people losing faith in the system, I think of the New Deal is that, right? Like the first and second deal in American history context, our reaction to the sense that this system is failing and when we need the government to do more. And now we are in a moment where people are pretty sure this system is failing, and so the question is is the government going to do more? And like those past moments, I think people being in the street and there being confrontations with authorities, those are all normal things, right? What’s the real question for me is to think about what’s the scope of the political imagination of leaders now? Is it as great as it has been in past?

[inaudible 0:13:30.1] in my head about that issue. About the scope of the political imagination. I think for African-Americans, there’s always a great sort of like liberatory vision that drives Black politics, but the coalitions of actors that I think about in the context of past historical transformation in terms of systems and politics, I worry about that in a sort of contemporary landscape in part because of things like the digital, the nature of the digital world.

So it’s more complicated to me personally, but I tend to believe in people in sort of like collective nature of humanity even when I get down on what I see is sometimes like inhumane policy from people and power.

SC:        You know, I — one second. We’re not there though. You know, I wrote this blog post last week. Just a lot of historians and history educators, like I don’t know how to navigate this moment, and I’m like one of the superpowers of historians is like we know stuff and we know how to read and we know how to research because like you’re saying all these nuances in history that lead up to this particular moment that could help provide us like context and nuance. I think it’s so much more integral that we are thinking of our work as people involved with teaching and learning history mobilizing the past as it’s a responsibility to highlight change and highlight resistance and highlight resilience in order to think about a transformation of society in moving forward.

And maybe that’s a good segue to the next question. Oh, no, I feel like you have something to say.

JC:        Yeah, I do think that is really important, and I am really interested in — I’ve had a colleague and we’ve been having these conversations about things like information fluency, which I know sounds weird, but like you often, I often talk to students about the sort of between good information and bad information.

JC:        And like the idea of like how do you get good information, right? And how do you recognize good information? And usually, I do this in the context of like Twitter is not the world, right? Like Twitter is not exactly the world. It’s like a funhouse mirror version of the world. But now, especially the different digital spheres that people find themselves in versus the physical spheres and bridging the kinds of knowledge that these different spheres have into a coherent whole becomes really important. And I agree with you, like I was posting about that Kerner report, the Kerner Commission from 1968.

JC:        Because I was like, people have written about this years ago, right? Like there was an urban riots in the United States in the late 1960 and the government wrote a report. In the first like summary, they said you need to stop because you’re creating a [inaudible 0:17:03.8*world web Black and White] and you’re going to have to change that or horrible things are going to happen. It’s going to take political will, right? Like that’s like in the first couple of paragraphs and then this go on from there like, you need to stop all of this, right? So it’s not that we don’t know what happened. Like it’s not that we haven’t been born. It’s just like people choose to forget. And so, yeah, that historical memory thing is real.

SC:        Well, I think of like couple things that have come up on the series are things about like cultural amnesia, socially amnesia. Natasha Henry who’s the president of the Ontario Black History Society and a African-Canadian history education specialist for the past two decades is like, this is about social death when we allow like our history sights to [inaudible 0:17:59.9*disintegrate] and Joe McGill from The Slave Dwelling Project said the same thing. And it’s interesting the histories that can be revered for particular aims that keep things — that maintain a past that actually wasn’t, you know? Like that maintains a past that doesn’t highlight things like diversity and resilience and struggles for greater power and for like systematic shutting down of some of those conversations.

JC:        Well, you know, I think we forget how important historical history has been for the future, right?

JC:        And I think one of the things that I’m really interested in is Afrofuturism. And part of the reason that appeals to me, my work, I work on comics as well as digital humanities things in history, and so there’s an element here when you think about Afrofuturism that the future, like the speculative is always an important part of a kind of future industry and the future industry in itself relies on projecting the present to the future. So like colonizing the past is important part of that process.

JC:        So national character is at some level tied up into the people in charge being able to like celebrate a very particular version of the past because they’re in charge right now and [inaudible 0:19:40.4] of the past needs to [inaudible 0:19:42.4] of being in charge now so they can continue to inject themselves into the future being in charge, right?

And so eliminating histories that don’t support that narrative become an important part of maintaining control, right? And so erasure is an important part of that process. And it doesn’t matter where you are in a western hemisphere, there’s an element of like kind of historical contest always at play in the public sphere because the people in charge are in charge and their version of the past which allows them to be in charge at some level needs to be validated and any kind of version of that story is problematic, right? And so whenever we talk about making a more equitable history, it often becomes broadening the narrative of how we got to the place that we are because that in term broadens the possibility of how we might proceed into the future.

SC:        There is another cat here. No, I don’t necessarily work on futurisms per se, but I have talked a lot about like creative nonfiction, because I think things like creative nonfiction, which I think there’s a lot of parallels with notions of futurism, allow young people in particular to be able to read and write and think into the past in ways that can help them navigate where they are now to give them tools for the future, which is why I talk about imagining a new ‘we’ because I think that imagination is so important, and I also talk about how we need to do that within historic space, which is hilarious because on your website you have a whole like banner that says imagine space. And I was like, am I reading that right? Because I think we’re going to get along. That we need to like imagine — sorry.

SC:        That we need to like imagine more within these historical spaces because it is through exploring the past, through imagining through the past that we can help see ourselves in a different present and a different future potentially. And that’s so important for students that routinely have encountered history in formal spaces that exclude any experiences that align with who they are.

JC:        Yeah, I think that’s really important. And when people think about the future, part of the reason that I think digital humanities, like digital things are important because they allow for us to sort of like make these more inclusive futures more available and more accessible. And part of the reason I have that imagine space [inaudible 0:22:53.8] is because yeah, in those imaginary spaces, you see people in dialogue with all these potential futures a lot of times. I mean, whether it’s comic books or speculative fiction, that’s often them trying to reach beyond the constraints offered by the system that they’re in or being offered by the expectations that have been given and it’s often very transformative, right?

And right now, I’m working on a project, a summer project with this video archive called The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. One of the things that we’ve been looking at is how Black people have used comics in their past lives to inspire a different worldview, and it’s interesting because you follow the examples stretching back into like the 1940s and ‘50s where young African-Americans were reading comics and it made them think about like rocket ships and then they became a rocket scientist because they’re like, “Well, I read the book of Rogers then I saw [inaudible 0:24:03.1] in an article, and I was like, This is a real thing. I could do this.” And they did, right?

So there’s this potentiality around imagining is really important for the past and for teachers, especially I think digital will offer a chance to connect their students with resources that they can use themselves to help imagine more complicated futures, because there’s always more happening than that’s in the record that you were given, right? Even when you go — right now, here in the United States, they just recently announced they were taking down the monuments to the Confederate generals in rich Richmond, Virginia, which is a Monument Avenue. And those spaces have been part and parcel of very elaborate narrative of white supremacy and on the one hand, getting rid of those physical spaces, those physical statues and taking them away as these symbols of white supremacy is what they are is very good, but there’s a part of me that wants them to think this is much about what are the new statues and the new marker that will sort of create a more equitable future that could be in those spaces, right?

So you remove these things that were distortive false histories, can you put something into that place, in our place that will be sort of affirmative, more inclusive figures of history? And I think that they can, it’s just a question of will they, right? And so there’s always this sort of interesting tension around having access to a more complicated story, which I think we increasingly do because of digital pains. We just have to find the time and the means to integrate them into the stories that we’re sort of required to tell, right? Like everybody has like their learning outcomes [inaudible 0:26:04.7*in lesson plans] that they’re supposed to do, but it could be done for sure.

SC:        So that seems — I have a cat here. That seems like a good segue to the second question of the three question, like discussion we’re having, about whether or not you think that history education will change after this moment. And when I’ve asked this question before, this moment was just the pandemic and this moment has become so much more significant. And what I often hear people say is like I hope, but there isn’t a very clear way about I will or it will or that this is the way it needs to happen. Do you have any thoughts? Do you think it will change after this? Like what will you imagine that would look like? Although the next question is about imagining, so if you want to say that, that’s okay too.

JC:        I think that there’s a lot of pressure on educators right now to sort of deliver on the most basic elements of education, right? And I think about this as a real challenge. And so we ask will education change? Like the answer is yes. I think the answer is yes, education is going to change. But the problem is that it might change for the worse, right?

SC:        Yeah.

JC:        Because I think one way that education is going to change is there is going to be I think a greater sort of like engagement with technology and that will create a number of different new chasms within the educational experience of students, right? So, as we all know, we’re all working from home right now and you’re at the mercy of your internet connection, right?

There were a number of stories in the spring semester as we were forced to start teaching online about people in the K-12 who did not have internet at home, and even if you do have internet at home, is the nature of your internet, the quality of your internet any good? I mean, in United States, we used to talk very deliberately about the digital divide, but I often point out to students, even though they don’t talk about that anymore, it still exists, but it’s a quality, right? It’s a quality divide.

And the reason I say that is because the reason they don’t talk about the digital divide as much as they used to is because a lot of people now have access to the internet, but they have it through mobile devices and that’s not the same as they have access through the internet through a desktop device. It’s just not.

I know students, I know some of my students did their work when they left through their phones, right? Even though I was like, that’s not the best way to write an essay, they did it through their phones. We will have to wrestle with the reality of an uneven access to the online environment. And again, it becomes a question of how was the state going to address that? Is it going to address it as some school districts in the United States by giving kids like iPads or laptops or something? Which is an answer, but that doesn’t mean that they have the greatest internet service provider. It just mean they had an iPad, right? Who’s going to pay for that? There are wildly different levels of funding for educational institutions, educational districts in the United States and some of them have stuff that are like cutting edge and some of them do not. And so that’s one element.

I think like we’re going to have a kind of weird new set of chasms that develop between educational institutions and we’re also going to have sort of private sector sort of growth, right? Because I get an email every day about a new tool I can use in class and I know some stuff about digital things and can say, “No, I don’t want to do this,” or I can say, “I can find an open-source version of that thing that you just want to sell me, so I’m not going to do this.” But how many people know that, right? Like how many people know that there’s like a sort of like OER, open electronic resource, environment that they can use to supplement their work? Like that is [inaudible 0:31:20.9] is an education that teachers have to do while at the same time they have to also do the normal thing they have to do when they’re teaching, right?

And so supporting all those sort of like growth areas in terms of the resources, that [inaudible 0:31:36.9*minimum] resources that teachers need, give them access to things, helping students with like questions around accessibility, like all those are real challenges. So at the end of the day, yeah, I think education is going to change because like the pressure on institutions right now coming out of the pandemic and with protest are going to be magnified across the next several years and there will be changes just because some institutions in the United States context, I don’t mean this as a hyperbole, some institutions will not survive.

JC:        They won’t get enough students, their funding will decline, there are going to be institutions of a certain size that are not going to be able to handle this or they’re going to come out the other side erratically different institution. And so that’s a real concern I think we all should have because every decision that they make that were around trying to stay alive may in fact involve something like seeking funding or making partnerships with for-profit entities that will require X, Y, and Z, right?

JC:        So I think that’s a discussion that we’re not really having now, but will probably going to have more and more.

SC:        You know, one of the things I was thinking of when you were saying like I know some students wrote their essays on phones. Like I’ve done a little bit of digital humanities work, not definitely to the extent that you have. And like even though in like the OER guide that I put together, I said to the professors like, “You don’t need to use fancy technologies, like just use Word to do like an annotation of a digital image.” But like even that, you can’t do on the phone, you know?

So like on one hand, there are these educators that are like coming up with amazing, amazing ideas about how to bridge and develop learning opportunities in these online digital spaces, but they might not translate to a phone. So if writing is something that we can do on our phones, we might not be able to do anything else. And so like that’s a really interesting kind of element too, right?

Like the digital, if we are imagining the digital on a laptop or on a desktop, that is not effective as if we are like, okay, create a digital story through TikTok, which please don’t explain it to me. I don’t get it and I don’t really want to know. Or like an Instagram story, right? Like think of these other ways that can be done on a phone as a way to create greater opportunities for students to engage, but through the technologies they have available if at all.

JC:        Yeah, I do think that’s true. I mean, some websites that we have access to, of course, there’s a mobile view, right? But you lose something on the mobile view, right?

JC:        So they can look at things on their phones, but it doesn’t look exactly like it looks on their laptop. Nine times out of 10, they may not. Probably 75%. I mean, that matters [inaudible 0:35:15.1] going to get to 80%. But for some people, that environment won’t work, like accessibility which is a [inaudible 0:35:27.9], right? Visual accessibility, you lose things when something is odd on a smaller screen, right? And the adjustments that could be made for something on the laptop [inaudible 0:35:40.6] like some of the accessibility tools, I don’t know that all of those pour over to the cell phone. Like sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t for what I can tell, but I haven’t done a systematic view and that will be something that people have to keep in mind.

I mean, I do think that there are things that people could do that are really interesting. There are a lot, right? Like I, of course, think about assignments that sort of flip the idea of what kind of work the students can do that they can do much more work that’s like critical and creative working in an online environment because they could take the raw materials, so the primary sources in my case, and use them in a story mode. For instance, like making a visual essay.

And a lot of people have access to Google Slide, and so you can talk to them about using Google Slide to do a photo essay. I did that a year before last as a final assignment and things like that. And so like that, if they do have access to the mobile version of that, it doesn’t look exactly the same, but they can sort of figure it out. But you kind of have to think creatively I think and you have to think about what do they have access to? And that’s why like talking to them about some of the open sources on the web becomes really important in terms of like quality of the information that they access to.

But yeah, there are opportunities, so that I don’t want to say like when talking about is education going to change, [inaudible 0:37:34.3*not all going to be bad,] but there’s definitely going to be like these weird challenges associated with it. And I wonder about the discussions that we’re having about that. And to me, as someone who’s thinking about teaching in the fall, right now I’m thinking about what’s an online class look like? Because the reality is I’m probably going to be teaching online to some significant [inaudible 0:38:01.8] is different than thinking about a face-to-face class without question, so.

SC:        It is. And I mean, I see more potential for this remote emergency online teaching to be more student-centric, right? To not be like, let’s just have this like huge array of content that we need to ensure that students like know and revere, but rather to find spaces for co-creation because like with some of the digital technologies, like the students know better than us. Like maybe not you, but students would know better than me not knowing Tiktok, and like maybe we can get them to help co-create these assignments and assessments. Like for me, that’s a real key exciting possibility, but I know that like just the idea of that can be really daunting to educators. Which is why I think it’s good [crosstalk 0:39:06.2]. Yeah.

JC:        Yeah.  You know, I do think that’s really interesting. I mean, TikTok is a really — almost for every pay thing that’s out there, there’s a free thing that you can substitute for, but the problem is that the free thing is way more clunky, right?

SC:        Right.

JC:        So you were right. Like making the TikTok video, which I’ve never made a TikTok video. I know what TikTok is, but I don’t feeling, you know, do anything with it.

SC:        Okay, thank you.

JC:        But making Instagram story, like I had a colleague who had students, they created a class Instagram and one of the final assignments was like students taking over the class Instagram and telling a story using the class Instagram as a sort of final essay. And they all had access to that class Instagram account and they made the story and she sort of evaluated that Instagram story using a criteria. And things like that are totally doable. But Instagram owns that now.

JC:        Which I’m like, mm, yeah. That’s a question.

SC:        I mean, it’s like how many battles can you fight at once? Fine Instagram, take it.

Okay, let’s move to the last question about imagining a new ‘we’. So this a concept that I came up with when I saw teachers, mainly white teachers, in classrooms mainly full of racialized students really like making this clear divide between like our history and like their history. And like let’s just make sure they know Canadian history, some of the Canadian context, and then, then, then. It’s important, so we’ll get to Black history too. And I’m like, you know, Black history isn’t for Black students. Black history is part of my history because it’s white supremacy and I’m a white person and I need to understand that, and she’s like, “Yes. No, definitely.” But also, let’s just teach the main story first.

And so it’s like we need to imagine greater circles of inclusion in the narratives that we tell that allow us to recognize these diverse histories, and not in ways that are just like add and stir because that’s not the thing. But I mean, obviously, you know that, but in ways that allow us to shape a different future of what we might look like and to shape to allow us to really shift and change what community and connection might look like as we move into the 21st century. So with all that being said, do you have any ideas about whether or not we can imagine a new we during or after this moment in different ways?

And some people are just like, “No, I think the concept of we is problematic,” and that is fair too. I still think though that this notion — I really appreciate you laughing, right? Because —

JC:        I just don’t know that like I would throw away we as a concept. Like that seems a little extreme. I get it, but.

SC:        I mean, like there are wes that are problematic, fair. But anyway, I’m just like allowing you to disagree with me if you would like.

JC:        Yeah, I think that — yeah, I want to state that I’m in favor of we. I know that seems simplistic, but as I say, I do tend to like think about a collective humanity that tends to move forward, right? Historians know that the past was worse than the present. Like I’m never like really — I’m never unclear about that. I am doing better than my great-great-grandparents, period, right? So I know that. But at the same time, I do understand what you mean about the place of the “other” in the dominant [inaudible 0:43:36.4*manner.] And I sometimes think about this in terms of history is like a great action-adventure story. Like it’s a great whatever story you wanted to be, right? But I like action-adventure story. So to me, it’s a great action-adventure story. It can be a great romance story. It can be like romance stories, but to me, it’s great action-adventure stories.

SC:        Well, from your background before you switched to this one, like I knew that was a great comic. Good comic books.

JC:        Yeah, it was [inaudible 0:44:06.6*comic background.] So as a great action-adventure story, there’s always like heroes and villains, right? And so by default, in the action-adventure stories of the past, the villains were always the people who weren’t White, right? Like, you know, it’s Black people, Brown people, Yellow people. Whatever color you want, they were the bad guy. And then they had like a loyal —

SC:        But also people don’t see color. White, black, green, purple, right? It just so happens.

SC:        It just so happens all the villains weren’t White.

JC:        Yeah, it just so happened that they’re — but because it’s like a story that has like  these sort of [inaudible 0:44:52.3] or action-adventure context, like there is like a central action figure like that’s giving point of view — like there’s a point of view character in a story. And I think like when I think about telling them their histories, I’m like, “Well, you can switch the point of view character,” and a couple of things happened. One, you can still tell the same story, right? Like you can do a point of view shift in the American Revolution and still tell the same story like America becoming free. It’s just that the nature of why and how and who did what, when. It’s just a little bit, right?

JC:        But there’s a lot of historical fiction that does this, right? They’ll take a character and it’ll be there. And then it’ll be in a room and George Washington is on the other side, the villain is the other thing that’s really important. But there are real people who are like that, right? And so I do think like that [inaudible 0:45:55.3] to shift the point of view, define the point of view characters that bring people of color and women into the center of the action because they were there and they’re just being ignored, right? They were there, but they’re just being ignored.

What does that mean for all the stories? Like sometimes those people are “the villain”, but like every action-adventure stories, the truly great villains aren’t villains. They think they’re doing the right thing.

JC:        Like they have a really clear vision of why they’re doing what they’re doing, they’re just on the wrong side of the story, right? So in history, the people who are on the “wrong side” of story, they’re really great villains because they have a good reason why they did it. If you get into it, you can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. [inaudible 0:46:52.4] change the story of the villain — you know, they’re competent villains. We all enjoy a competent villain in an action-adventure story. Like they’re making more variety. A competent villain makes things more excited. Let’s just be honest, right?

And so those are things that people can do. They can shift the point of view characters, make the story a little less about those people that everyone knows is still the same story, and they can give the villains their due, right? Don’t ignore what they said or why they said it, instead like bury down. Be like, yeah, they had a good point of view, and what does it mean for us to think about our “heroes” through the lens of that person who was in opposition. They’re antagonists, right? Protagonist and antagonist. Not heroes and villains, but protagonist and antagonist, right?

JC:        Because many of these people who are “villains”, they’re now your neighbors, right? Like their descendants are right around the corner. You eat their food. So they’re not villains, they were at one point on the opposite side of a conflict. That conflict ended and there was a peace, and they had to come to terms with that peace because they didn’t have the power to impose their peace and so they become a part of the whole. And what does it mean — what was the consequences of that [inaudible 0:48:37.9]?

In the American context, one of the things that’s really a historical moment is how the south won the peace, right? Like they told a different history. They told a different version of history that justify their continued white supremacy. Even though the system, they gave birth to white supremacy, slavery was overturned. So they created a whole story, a mythology that justified their supremacy, that white supremacy. And allows them to be violent still, it allows them to do all these things, and that’s an example in the American context of like how important telling a story can be.

And so when you’re a teacher and you gather the narrative, like when you, you know, in my version, the action-adventure story. When you put in together the like point of view characters, you don’t have to ignore how it’s going to end. It’s always going to end the same way, but you can get there lots of different ways.

JC:        And the way you make your decision really matter to students.

SC:        Well, ends like get students to do choose your own adventure, right? Like I don’t —

JC:        Yeah, right, your own adventure.

SC:        Yeah. Like I don’t know why we — I mean, the students that I worked with, like I kept thinking I’d have to like convince them of how important history is and they’re like, “No, we know. Do it better.” Like they weren’t saying that to like me, but they were saying that in the interviews, like we know this. And some students were saying like, the most interesting history I’ve ever learned was in elementary school because we got to do [inaudible 0:50:28.1] around it. Like it wasn’t just sit here and tell me the story.

Because I think of like it’s not action-adventure. I think you mentioned romance. It’s not that either. It’s a musical. But I think — like I think of Hamilton. Like I think of the musical Hamilton in so much of what you’re saying that like Burn Hamilton or both these characters that we see their complexities and the casting and the ways of the story is able to kind of present itself forces you to think new ways about the present, right?

SC:        And I just think that’s just so powerful. So thank you so much for just bringing that to this conversation. This has been so wonderful.

JC:        Oh, no problem. Thanks for asking me. It’s always nice to think about teaching and every teacher knows you’re always wondering am I doing a good job with this? Look, like I think that all the time. Like I’d sometimes tell the students like, this was not a good one, but I’ll do better next time, right? Like I’ve said that at the end of the class like, yeah, this wasn’t great.

SC:        Sorry.

JC:        [inaudible 0:51:44.0]

SC:        Well, I mean, —

JC:        [inaudible 0:51:45.8] you know, like that was awesome. You guys should be really pleased [inaudible 0:51:51.1]

SC:        I’m sorry I wasn’t new for this one because — but I mean, like one of the things that I’ve written in the past is like to work with your students. Like think of it as a learning community and like you as an educator, I don’t mean you, but like maybe you, don’t need to be the expert. You can just help guide them through the like exploration of these topics. And so if the class is bad, it’s their fault, not yours.

JC:        That’s good.

SC:        Yeah.

JC:        [inaudible 0:52:25.1]

SC:        [inaudible 0:52:29.8] because of you today. So take that on. But it’s different because in an online learning environment, I was like I don’t have the same tricks. Like it’s not like I have a lot of tricks, but if I’m staring at like all these black boxes because students don’t have like a webcam or they don’t want to turn it on, it’s like hard to know if things are landing, you know? So, yeah.

JC:        Yeah.

SC:        It is really going to be a challenge to educators moving forward, but especially in this new milieu.

JC:        I hear you. Yeah, I totally get that.

SC:        Yeah. Well, Julian, thank you so much, and hopefully we stay connected.

JC:        Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m looking forward to checking out the series and thanks again for asking me to participate.

SC:        Thank you so much, and I’ll provide all the links to your work and any other resources that you think might be useful for people or comic books that you want them to read below the video as well.

JC:        Okay.

SC:        Okay. All right, see you later. Bye. That was great.