My blog post is a couple of days late this week. It’s been a whirlwind. I’m writing from the airport at one of those weird tables with outlets and chairs with no backs. I guess it’s so you don’t get too comfortable! Rather than writing my paper, which I will present in two days, I’m writing this. I excel at procrastinating. That paper should be about six pages and is about teaching at a conference. As I sit here, reflecting on what I should be doing and what I am actually doing, my thoughts keep returning to this month’s blog and Instagram theme: Secrets and Storytelling. Previously, my June theme was History and Storytelling. I’m a storyteller. I think I always have been. It doesn’t matter the job, location, or anything else – I tell stories.
Why secrets this time? My espionage class, of course, and my fascination with the FBI, OSS, and SOE during World War II. The topic also fits perfectly with my conference, History of Intelligence. Espionage is built on secrets—on stories hidden beneath the surface. That’s why, this month, I’m exploring not just the stories themselves, but how they’re created, transmitted, challenged, and remembered. Understanding how narratives are constructed is just as important as discovering facts. The thing about history and being a historian is that we rarely receive a complete record of events. Think about that phrase: history is written by the victors. As historians, we need to show everything, even when it means asking a government to declassify documents. In full transparency, I haven’t asked for declassification. Still, given my time period, most of what I need and use has since been declassified at the request of another historian (or, in some cases, enough time has passed).
The part of the past that helps historians and those we share it with comes from all sorts of archival sources, including diaries, reports, memoirs, photographs, newspapers, and official documents. In many ways, today’s social media accounts have become the new diaries, or rather visual records of our lives spread across several platforms. I have several Instagram accounts, so my story would need to be cobbled together. Given my age, you may want to look at my Facebook and possibly try to find my old Twitter account.
Just as historians piece together the past from scattered sources, we now assemble digital histories from bits and pieces across the internet. Every source reflects choices about what it includes, omits, or emphasizes. As humans, we need and love stories. People naturally organize events into narratives. Have you organized your Instagram or TikTok to show only part of the story? My job is to uncover the unknowns and create the complexity history requires. One caveat, though, is that people can accept compelling stories as truth even when the evidence is incomplete. This challenge is familiar not only to historians but also to intelligence analysts. While I’m out for the full week, I have both of my classes acting as intelligence analysts and writing a recommendation report. I’ve cautioned them not to solve the mystery or make it up, but rather to understand and talk about the unknowns. The most revealing stories are often not the ones we uncover, but the ones we learn to question. This October, I’ll explore the spaces where fact, memory, identity, and imagination meet, and ask not only what stories survive, but how they came to be told in the first place.
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