"History is All Around You": An Interview with M.A. student Aidan MacKinlay

From childhood on, I was always surrounded by history. My mother was a librarian; my father was an archeologist. The middle point between the two of them was museums and historical sites, which meant that even as a kid I had a deep appreciation for history. But I developed my own relationship with history in high school, when I decided I wanted to study history, even though I did not really know what that meant.

When I came to FSU, I knew that History was my thing. As an undergrad, I majored in History with a minor field in American literature, and for me the two go together. One can’t really understand history without reading the literature of the time, and you can’t understand literature without relevant historical knowledge.

Coming into grad school, I rediscovered my passion for research and for writing and presenting. I also reconnected with public history. I want to work in all those historic sites and museums that kindled my original interest in history. I am completing a master’s degree in U.S. history with a minor field in public history. My favorite historical period at the moment is from the 1890s to the 1920s in the American South.

My M.A. thesis is researching Confederate monuments. I am especially looking at a monument in Andersonville, Georgia. Erected for Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville Prison (aka Camp Sumter), he was one of the only men executed for war crimes in the wake of the American Civil War. Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp, was severely overcrowded, and with inadequate water and food supplies and unsanitary conditions, almost one third of its inmates died. Andersonville National Historic Site also contains Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum.

Confederate monuments have always been fascinating to me; they are visible representations of historical memory. The Andersonville monument to Henry Wirz has always been hotly contested, and it is this contest of memories that is interesting to me. My thesis will be on the very contentious debates between memorial groups in 1909 over the placement of the Wirz monument.

During my undergrad career, I did two internships. In Spring 2020, I did an education-focused internship with The Grove Museum in Tallahassee. This made it possible for me to work there full-time as an educator after I graduated. During my two years at The Grove, I did a lot of different things. My main job was giving tours to the public, which was also my favorite thing to do. I love talking about history.

Just as in many other small museums, staff need to handle a variety of tasks. I worked in program planning, development and outreach. I represented The Grove at events that other museums hosted. I worked in collection management which looks after the day-to-day preservation of the museum’s holdings. Since in my tours I was interpreting museum objects for the visitors, looking after the collection more generally was another way of engaging with it. I was involved in annual collection audits which established that all the objects were where they were supposed to be.

Since The Grove itself is a museum piece — it was built in 1835 — looking after the house is part of the job of collection management. The temperature and moisture in the walls were strictly monitored and both needed to stay below certain thresholds. Learning to look after such a giant museum piece was very interesting!

My second internship was as an archival assistant for the World War II and the Human Experience Institute. It was the semester before the institute moved to the Claude Pepper Center. In that position, I created finding aids and learned to handle actual historic documents and objects. This was an immensely useful experience as a public historian but also my own scholarly undertakings since when I go to an archive or special collections now, I know how to find things, how to handle documents and photographs and other fragile objects.

I want to stay within the museum field, if I can. I love the place-based learning aspect of it. How the space around me tells a story, and the objects around me assist me in making history engaging. I also love working with the public — and I would love a position which is mainly focused on engaging with the public. Through my education and public history experience, I have come to love public speaking. I used to be terrified of it, in high school and also the beginning of undergrad, I was petrified when I had to speak publicly. But when I saw that I could teach people the history that I had learned and help understand a historical site, then public speaking became the most fun thing in the world. 

Right now, in addition to my master’s degree, I am also the website and social media content manager for the Tallahassee Historical Society. It is a very rewarding way for me to disseminate the society’s historical knowledge. Most of the members are retirees who have lived in Tallahassee for many decades. Most of the job is virtual, but I do go to the monthly meetings, record them, and upload them to the society’s YouTube channel. This is the first time that I can develop skills in the technical/ technological and graphic design side of things, and I enjoy learning the digital side of public history.

My favorite aspect of all my public history experiences so far has been interpreting the past to the public. I particularly enjoy tailoring the stories I tell to my audience, whether they are school groups, families or interested adults. When people come to a museum or a site, you have maybe 30 minutes to one hour to share your knowledge with them. Knowing what the most important thing might be to learn for a specific group of visitors, making the information relevant to them, and creating a rewarding experience — those are the things that got me into history as a child. I enjoy being able to introduce the past to the next generation of visitors.

While it was challenging at the time, I enjoyed leading tours for school groups. I learned very quickly to shorten the generic tour description to the most salient points, to cut out the long words, to slow down the speed with which I spoke, and to make sure that the most important parts were explained in a way that was relatable to schoolchildren. I wanted the students to have a very sensory experience, to clearly understand what an object did and how it worked. I also asked twice as many questions as I would do an older audience, because schoolchildren were usually ready to participate. These strategies allowed me to keep the students engaged, and I could see them learning.

My advice to others who might be interested in internships or graduate programs is apply to everything. The worst-case scenario is that you get a rejection. Even if you are not sure about the fellowship, the internship, the job or the grad program, apply. Especially with positions within the public history field, those might have a broader remit than the job title implies.

When I first read about the Grove internship in my freshman year, I wasn’t 100 percent sure that that was what I wanted to do. But I applied, and when I met the people, I liked the atmosphere and accepted the internship position. And then as I did the internship, I realized that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I had always thought that I would get a job in which I would research and write about history – but the Grove internship made me realize that I really love talking about history.

The other piece of advice I have is to keep on going to museums and historic sites. You will always learn something new, whether it is local or national histories. You can also learn how other people talk about their own history. There are so many sites that have historical connections, like cemeteries or public parks, where history is not directly in your face. But the more you look, you’ll see the plaques, the monuments, little things that will teach you about the history of a place. This is a way to learn about the history of places around you.