“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”
 — Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

Christopher Hitchens was a contrarian by profession and temperament, spending much of his career challenging authority, eviscerating orthodoxy, and refusing the comfort of consensus. But for all his suspicion of received wisdom, he never mistook skepticism for contempt of expertise.

And that, I think, is where we find ourselves right now.

Our readings this semester have made it abundantly clear that archives, museums, historic sites, and public historians themselves hold enormous power over what gets preserved, whose voices are heard, and how the past gets interpreted. Public historians also have a responsibility to confront and correct incomplete, misleading, or disingenuous versions of the past. If the historical evidence leads somewhere uncomfortable, politically or otherwise, we should follow it there and let the chips fall where they may.

However, I start to get uncomfortable when public historians make moral judgments about people who disagree with their interpretation. At that point, disagreement can start to look less like part of a shared conversation and more like a challenge to professional authority. Which is ironic (don’t cha think?), considering how much public history talks about sharing authority in the first place.

That kind of narrow thinking seems especially dangerous in our current dumpster fire of a political climate, where people are already far too eager to sort one another into neat little ideological boxes. A rural conservative is not automatically ignorant or racist any more than a liberal is automatically a raging blue-haired communist. People and communities are complicated, and public historians should be among the last people flattening them into silly little caricatures simply because their politics or values make us uncomfortable.

Because nuance seems to be in short supply these days, let me be crystal clear: I am not talking about openly racist groups, people operating in bad faith, or people trying to use public history to launder utter nonsense. They do not deserve a platform. I am talking about people who may disagree with a public historian’s interpretation or even with the prevailing interpretation in the field. That disagreement does not automatically make them the villain, the idiot, the racist, or whatever other label is easiest to slap on them.

To me, that is where the public historian belongs in these disputes: willing to follow the evidence, honest about the interpretive choices they make, and humble enough to know the difference between being challenged and being wronged. If we want the public to trust us, we probably shouldn’t treat disagreement as insubordination. Public historians should expect their expertise to be respected, but not obeyed. Hitchens understood the difference between skepticism and contempt, and I think our field can too. As he warned, “Don’t allow your thinking to be done for you by any party or faction, however high-minded.”

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” Hunter S. Thompson

As someone with Bipolar 1, I am one of the unlucky ones who have, unfortunately, gone over the edge. Completely delusional, in fact. They call it mania; I call it God Mode.

I am all that has ever been when I’m in that state of mind. Time and money cease to exist. There is me, and only me, and everything is connected specifically for me to find. I am the most beautiful and sexy creature on the planet, and why wouldn’t I be? Didn’t you notice all this weight I lost? I’m just as skinny as the models! Look how sharp my jawline is. Look at these cool tattoos I got on my ankles! Never mind the deep, dark circles under my eyes or the sunken-in cheeks; look how bright and shiny my eyes are! I only need to sleep 2 or 3 hours a night. Sometimes not at all. There’s just so much to do. Projects. So many projects. Everything needs to be done now because why not now? If not now, when? It needs to be done now, and why would I stop working when I’m in the middle of a project? I could just go all night! Oh, you’re worried about me? Why are you worried? I finally found my true self and you are obviously jealous of my newfound freedom. I actually think all of you are dragging me down. And stealing all of my stuff, so I’m installing a deadbolt on a bedroom door to keep everyone out. That will show all of you. And are you concerned? Well, let me just tell you how you’ve completely failed as a parent for all these years. Never mind that your brain is riddled with Parkinson’s; you did all of this to me. I actually think I’ll start traveling to St. Louis and meet people and start a new life away from all of you. They will love me there. Why wouldn’t they? I’m clearly the best there’s ever been. I have all these great ideas and know so much better than them. So I’ll push and shove and persist until it finally comes to fruition. And then I’ll decide to go overseas. First class of course. And explore and spend money I don’t have because money isn’t real anyway, and I have this nice shiny metal credit card that will handle it, and drink till 3 in the morning and pretend I’m 20-something again. None of it actually matters anyway. Life is short! Live it now!

This went on for nine months.

I was finally able to get on an antipsychotic, but it would take another 6 or 7 months to completely come “back to normal.” I went from strictly mania to being in a mixed episode, which is mania or hypomania along with depression, and then straight to Self-Destruct Mode, or as it’s commonly known, severe depression. I wanted to end it so many times and decided against it, only for my kids. That would last for another 4 months.

Eventually, I started to get better. Instead of clawing my way back up the hill to the edge, I could at least crawl or, on good days, walk.

But as soon as I heaved my leg over the ledge to climb back up, my friend Havy committed suicide. A few months later, I got divorced. Two weeks after that, my Mom suddenly died after surgery. Then my biological father died 16 days after her. My relationships with both parents were complicated, and now there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. They’re both dead. Opportunity gone.

Cue the severe depression again.

Then I finally start to feel some relief.

Uh oh, stress is piling up because I’m trying to graduate. I’m back in hypomania.

Actually, I’m crying a lot. Maybe I’m depressed.

Do I actually feel alive again, or am I hypomanic?

Am I just stressed, or am I depressed again?

Maybe it’s both. I do feel amped but keep crying a lot.

Who knows.

So, when people like me use Hunter S. Thompson’s quote about the edge, it’s because we know exactly where it is. We live there, cautiously walking around, praying and hoping we don’t fall over it again. Second-guessing ourselves and our feelings. Always on alert. It’s never-ending. The temptation to fall over is always there, but so far, I’ve resisted. I hope I stay this way because I never want to be in God Mode or Self-Destruct Mode ever again.

Late last night, I found myself wandering down memory lane as I listened to “Somersault” by Zero 7 and Sia and reflected on the past week. A part of me I thought was long gone had suddenly reignited, growing in intensity and flooding my veins with a fire I haven’t felt in ages. It took me back to Nice, France, when I was a starry-eyed thirty-year-old with her Greek/Australian “boyfriend,” meandering past French cafés filled with people who seemingly had nowhere else to be but in that exact moment, my hand warmly tucked into his wool coat pocket, with the whole world at my fingertips. Nothing mattered but me, him, and our fleeting time together. It was to be our last rendezvous as a couple. His wife had become suspicious, and he still needed to become a U.S. citizen. Practical matters aside, our love affair had been the most passionate, volatile, sensual, adventurous, and alive relationship I had ever experienced. It was beautiful. We were beautiful. But all beautiful things must come to an end, and so it was on the French Riviera.

Our days were filled with early morning coffees in small cafés, cigarettes between our fingers as we watched the city come alive and ended with long conversations over bottles of red wine deep into the night. We spent our days exploring the countryside, roaming through Monaco and Cannes before crossing into Ventimiglia, Italy. Often, we found ourselves gazing into each other’s eyes as if, somehow, if we stared long enough, we might slip onto another plane of existence where none of this was real. I didn’t realize it then, but this relationship would become the standard by which I measured the ones that came after it, and men would try and fail to reach the bar he had set.

He was a perfect gentleman. Opened doors, pulled out chairs, took my coat, and waited for me to sit down before he did. He would hold my hand and kiss it often. If I was cold, his coat would appear around me. He would buy me clothes and chocolates and necklaces and make sure that I knew I was cherished and adored in every single way, including in bed. He loved every part of my body and treated it with reverence, something close to worship. I was completely and totally in love with him. I had no reason not to be. He was passionate in everything he did, including being a contrarian, which, to me, was like catnip. It was a battle of wits every day and I loved a good challenge. He excited me intellectually, sexually, and emotionally. And even when we fought, he was passionate. The arguments were loud and angry and could, at times, be full of venom. But I loved that too. I had never felt more alive than when I was with him. So, when this feeling came roaring back, I had to figure it out. While my Greek lover was a beautiful chapter, that chapter is over. So, what was it?

Perhaps I missed the feeling of being wanted. Wanted so fiercely that someone could barely contain themselves, even in spaces where they absolutely should. Perhaps I missed those caresses all over my body, hands searching desperately for a way to pull me closer. Maybe it was the flirting, the pictures, the unmistakable hunger to have me completely. Or perhaps it was the feeling of being completely alive again. To be the object of pursuit, but also to pursue. Pursue sex, travel, risk, desire, people, ideas. To have an insatiable appetite for anything and everything life has to offer. To find myself again, whoever and wherever she may be. The fire has been reignited. This time, I intend to follow it.

This weekend I attended the Missouri Interpreters Conference at the Lake of the Ozarks, and while I learned quite a lot, including that I am strangely decent with an atlatl and can fire 40 rounds at moving clay targets with a shotgun and actually hit five of those targets, I also couldn’t stop thinking about the keynote speaker and how her opening remarks related to our class focus: decolonization.

She began by saying that public historians need to rebuild trust between themselves and rural communities, something I was ecstatic to hear. Academia has long distanced itself from working-class and rural communities, so this felt like progress on something I have been harping on for years. Hurray! She laid out her bullet points on the subject, and I was wholeheartedly agreeing with everything that came out of her mouth. Until I didn’t.

She then went on to imply that rural communities are backward, uneducated people who need well-educated professionals who Know Better to step in and show them how things should be done. Carefully, of course, because you know how Those People can be. Some of them might even be Republican! The horror!

While I am keeping hope alive that maybe she’s just a really, really bad speaker and I’ve got it all horribly wrong, I’m having a hard time reconciling her stated goal of rebuilding trust with the way she blatantly patronized rural communities in her remarks. She made these implications so casually that I even wrote in my notes that I thought she was arrogant.

It’s as though rural communities have become a new version of the Other: people who can be generalized, talked down to, and treated as though someone else knows what is best for them. Their experiences barely seem to matter because apparently they are all the same uncivilized, uncultured, uneducated right-wing caricature anyway. Except, of course, rural communities are much more complicated than that. Not that anyone would take the time to find out.

Perhaps it might do public history, and maybe even the public at large, some good to take a few lessons from decolonization efforts and apply them to how rural communities are viewed. Blatant classism and gross assumptions about people do nothing to further our understanding of anything, other than prove how easy it is to become the thing you claim to oppose.

My name is Rebecca, and I am a history graduate student at UMSL. I am in the general History MA, MHPH (Museums, Heritage, and Public History) certificate, and University Teaching certificate programs. I took the scenic route to get here. I earned my GED in 2020, an associate’s degree in 2022, a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Science in Public Policy and Administration in December 2025, and, since I’m a glutton for punishment, began my M.A. program in the spring of 2026. I am 42 years old and feel every bit of it. I like long walks on the beach and enjoy a good round of tacos and margaritas.

My research interests tend to center on labor and working-class history, politics, and the lives of ordinary, everyday people. I strongly detest “Super Important Guy” history and actively try to avoid it as much as possible.

In accordance with that mantra, the universe decided to reward me this summer by surprising me with a basement full of the institutional history of five or six Kansas City Teamsters locals, dating from around 1908–2012. What began as an effort to keep a bunch — and by “bunch,” I mean a freight storage container’s worth — of old records from ending up in a dumpster quickly became an unexpected crash course in archival preservation. The collection eventually found a permanent home at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Labor History Research Center at George Washington University, and my name will appear on its finding aid as the donor. That is still a slightly surreal outcome for something that began with me thinking, “Someone needs to save all this stuff and it looks like that someone is me.”

As for my future, well, that’s future me’s problem. I have learned the hard way that making concrete long-term plans is usually a good way to ensure that I end up doing something entirely different. What I do know is that I want to continue working with the histories of working-class and ordinary people and find ways to make that history accessible to people outside academia. Where exactly that takes me … I have no idea.

(P.S. I used an em dash. Two of them actually. You can pry my em dash out of my cold, dead hands.)

Hello there. I’m world-renowned history graduate student Rebecca Troyer, and this… is my blog. For this particular class, anyway. There is another. Take that as you will.

In all seriousness, I am not world-renowned, but I am a history graduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, working towards a career in public history. I most definitely did not take the usual route here, and I think that has a lot to do with the kind of historian I find myself becoming. I earned my GED at 36, my BA and BS at 41 (why, yes, I am an overachiever), and now I’m in my third semester of grad school at 42, taking a Fall 2026 class centered on a soon-to-be-reopened Hanley House museum in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis.

That very unconventional path has influenced me not only as a historian, but also how I move through public history places, like, well, museums. I must admit I find myself to be a bit of an oddball because I would prefer to be left alone with my thoughts. I, fortunately or unfortunately, like to have a “good think” about what I am encountering and find it to be quite annoying to be interrupted during my scheduled thinking time. I believe the Benedict Cumberbatch version of Sherlock Holmes had the same problem, although he went into his mind palace while I’m convinced I have a mind shack. But other than that pesky problem, most museums I’ve wandered around in have made me feel comfortable by giving me exactly what I want: space. I clearly like to take the road less traveled and figure things out for myself, given my educational history, so it makes sense that I approach museums in much the same way: give me the information, give me some space, and let me figure out what I think about it for myself.

It is in that spirit that I will be approaching our work at the house museum this semester, as we help develop interpretation for its reopening next year. I sincerely hope to contribute to creating an experience that gives visitors enough context to understand the house while still leaving them room to explore, think, and make their own connections.

And with that, this introduction must come to an end. There is a word limit, and I have to check myself before I wreck myself.