Team Playboy: A Reflection

Over the course of this semester, I have collaborated with classmates Samantha and Jay to create an online exhibit that examines a decade of history through the lens of Playboy magazine. The three of us naturally named ourselves ‘Team Playboy’ for this project. The aim of this blog is defend our project as a whole, which should be visible from following our experiences and process behind its creation. For guidance and reference, I will place our contractual mission statement here:

Our website intends to explore ideas of the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and counterculture through an examination of Playboy magazines from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, a period in American history when The New Left challenged the social, political, and cultural status quo. We will do this through a study of the magazine's covers, articles, advertising, comics, and editorials, which will be represented in our exhibit by showcasing collections of the materials listed above.

Cover of December 1967 Playboy

All exhibits begin with research. Our primary materials, the Playboy magazines, are located in UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library in Special Collections. I was initially surprised to learn that these magazines were in Special Collections, which is largely the library’s archive of rare and historical documents. The friendly women who work in Special Collections, and who aided Team Playboy throughout our research, told us that Playboy is kept there so that they can be watched. The years 1965-1977 are represented, but the years 1971 and 1972 are missing. The first few years actually include every issue from that year, so they were bound, but as the magazines progress into the 1970s, only most issues from those years were available. Even though we capped our research at 1975 to focus our exhibit on a clean decade, we still had a lot of Playboy to cover and then digitize. This was somewhat difficult for me, since Special Collections is only from 8am-5pm on weekdays, and I worked at Desktop Support this semester until 4pm Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So I basically had two days a week to possibly do research, not taking into consideration all my other work for graduate school. While finding the time was difficult, once I got into the research, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did not have much exposure to Playboy before this project, so I went into this with preconceived notions from others about how much Playboy objectifies women and how it is trashy pornography, but I kept an open mind. My research found just the opposite for this time period. I discovered sensually posed playmates (typically only one an issue during the 1960s), insightful articles, cartoons that played off of fine art, and a decently intellectual community considering the societal issues of their time. Of course, there were strains of bigotry, misogyny, and lack of political correctness visible in the forums and some cartoons, but I was still shocked by the heavily-text based content of Playboy.

After much brainstorming, we kept returning to the discourse on social issues throughout the magazine, which culminated into our mission statement. Sam decided to focus on the civil rights movement, Jay took the Vietnam War and counter culture, and I went with the sexual revolution and women’s liberation. We decided on these topics, because we repeatedly saw them being the most heavily discussed throughout the decade. It is obvious that our mission statement, written at the beginning of the semester, has been revised slightly in its execution, in the aim of precision and clarity. Once we had our individual focus, we each had to do research for secondary sources for the historical context and to gain a better understanding of Hugh Hefner. This is standard research for a history major. However, creating an online exhibit has not been typical within my education, but seems to be increasingly important for historians.

To present social revolution through Playboy, we were introduced to Omeka, a website that allows people to create online exhibits, for the purpose of this project. We used the free version of Omeka, which gives 500MB of free storage space for one exhibit. This was surprisingly more than enough. From our mission statement, it is clear that our site heavily relies on images and PDFs. Each of us uploaded at least ten items to Omeka, I personally uploaded many articles as PDFs (some of which were longer than ten pages), and we collectively used only a little over half of the free 500MB. However, the appearance of the exhibit is not as customizable as I expected. Honestly, the social networking site MySpace allows more aesthetic customization. Omeka also forces users to create their website within Omeka’s layout, which was difficult for my group. It took me an extremely long time, and a lot of hard work, to organize my exhibit and the website as a whole. There was a disconnect between the ideas I knew I wanted to present and the medium, Omeka, I had to use to illustrate those concepts. After bouncing ideas off my group members, I found a way to present my topic, and so did Sam and Jay.

I was finally able to translate my research into Omeka by focusing on the Playboy Philosophy. We initially considered an article published in the magazine, “The Decent Society,” as our unifying concept for all three of our exhibits. This article discusses ways to achieve a better society and specifically addresses issues in regard to our three topics. We realized that this article is essentially a proposed implementation of the Playboy Philosophy. During this decade, I would describe Playboy as a soapbox for Hugh Hefner. The Philosophy is basically Hefner’s strong belief in individual freedoms, as long as no one is harmed, and this is apparent throughout the magazine. It was common during this time to have a section just about the Philosophy, often discussing donations to groups working to ensure civil or women’s rights, or protesting the war. The Philosophy had definite views on the social movements we examined throughout the decade, allowing us to explicitly consider this time through Playboy. Since this is the purpose of our website, we were able to organize our exhibit after this breakthrough, supporting our contract.

Throughout this process, Team Playboy has kept in touch and worked together by email and meetings. I think we met to discuss our project more often than we met for Digital History, in an attempt to keep everyone on track and to help each other with issues we encountered, such as the creation of PDFs. We also watched documentaries about Hefner and Playboy, and Samantha and I purchased the October 2012 issue of Playboy for further insight and comparison. While we have hit many mental roadblocks, we figured out ways around them. I consider our exhibit an effective exploration of the social revolutions occurring during 1965-1975 from the perspective of Playboy, yet I’m not ready to show the world our exhibit just yet. We are tweaking a few things before our presentation Thursday; once it is perfect, I will be posting it everywhere!

Team Playboy representing the Playboy Philosophy in our own way.
Robe (Sam). Pipe (Me). Bunny (Jay).

Word Spinning for the Web

I've been perusing Yahoo's Style Guide to further my understanding of writing for the web, and I've found it is similar to an effective historian's writing within a monograph. This view is largely based on my experience of reading historical monographs, but also comes from pointers I've learned in various history classes. First, just because one is a good historian does not mean they are a skilled writer. I've read way too many historical works that drone on and on with lengthy sentences and frivolous repetition. Actually, for such books, I usually don't read them once I struggle through the introduction. Instead, I skim as little as possible to quickly end the pain. Like ripping off a band-aid. I've also read some very well written monographs. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany by Isabel Hull immediately comes to mind. Although Hull's book focuses on boring military practices (social/intellectual history for the win!), her writing is so strong that the work is compelling. In spite of Absolution Destruction being somewhat dense, her introduction and conclusion are only a few pages long, illustrative of her direct, concise writing. She also uniquely utilizes lists throughout her work to promote clarity. Hull's style is similar to effective online writing, where the reader's attention has to be kept. A difference between the two is writing for the web is best structured in bursts, instead of the large amount of text in books. Most online readers avoid pages of text. Overall, I think clear, concise writing is a good rule of thumb, no matter if it is online or not. Yet one must keep in mind online readers tend to have small attention spans! This, along with considering the online interface and possible disabilities of readers, seem to be the only real differences between excellent writing for the web or writing somewhere else to disseminate information.

One way to improve writing is to assess it with the Writer's Diet tool. By submitting a piece of writing, it gauges how "flabby" or "fit" the writing is. Basically, it considers different aspects of the work to analyze its effectiveness, as discussed above. I submitted my last blog, Data Mining, into the tool and this is the result I received:

I am surprised by my results, especially since I submitted a blog post. I seek to be a bit lax and less academic in my blog. This tool is helpful for improving one's writing and I plan on using it while I write for Team Playboy's online exhibit. I can now work on my verb and "it, this, that, and there" usage. The tool shows everything I wrote in parentheses marked out...but I love parentheses and will never stop using them!

Data Mining

Within the last couple decades, technology has significantly altered the way we research, and technology continues to impact how we collect data. Search engines have greatly simplified the process of finding and linking data. Dan Cohen and William Turkel discuss data mining within this context. Their articles got me thinking the most, so I will just focus on them. In Cohen's article, From Babel to Knowledge, it's interesting that he points out the relationship between research, analysis, and time. This was not his main point, but it really struck me. Since information is so easy to instantly obtain today, historians spend less time doing research. This frees up a lot of time, which allows deeper analysis of the data found. While Cohen doesn't mention this, I have noticed that history involves so much more today than ever before. A great deal more is expected of historians now. For example, a common theme in all of my classes is that we tear historical monographs apart that do not represent both sexes and as many races and classes as possible, depending on the available data from that time. In the past, works that only considered white, upper class men dominated history. Diversity didn't explode in American History until after the 1960s. Historians are expected to include and represent as much as possible in their work today, and I think our quicker research tools has liberated (sometimes feels like shackled!) our analyses in this way. Because of technology and search engines, we have more time for further research and analysis, which enables historians to be so inclusive. Cohen seeks to extend the historian's search and lights the path to do so, which is helpful and insightful.

In Turkel's blog, he discusses the fact that AOL released their user search data in 2006 and relates this to Public History. People were still using AOL in 2006? I thought it died out of popularity at least by 2000, as Google began claiming the search engine reigns. Apparently some people were using AOL, because three months of data was presented from over a half a million users. Anyway, AOL ended up withdrawing the data (who would have thought: sensitive information about the randomly numbered users could be figured out...). But anything that has been on the internet, stays on the internet somewhere. Turkel demonstrates how easy one can manipulate the AOL data for the use of historians and how much insight such data can give. I found it interesting that by analyzing what people are searching, you can understand how they perceive and search for history. This is very useful to a public historian, who is trying to reach their audience in the best way. If we can think like them and know what they are searching...we can better engage our audience in history exhibits! Turkel seems to have a sense of humor, since he lastly points out the AOL user's obvious concern with privacy based on the search data. This made me laugh anyway, but that could be because I'm a terrible person that sometimes laughs at the ironic misfortune of others.

Digitizing the Learning Process?

In my graduate class about digital history, we utilize Twitter (some students more than others, of course). My group, Team Playboy, uses Twitter to quickly update and question each other on our progress. Twitter is an easy and quick way to keep all group members on the same page. Many students tweet their class blog so other classmates can easily access them, but this also has the possibility of networking students to a larger interested or professional group by the use of hashtags (such as #digitalhistory or #history). During class, my professor opens her Tweet Deck on the projector so that everyone can view it. Students tweet questions and information during discussion and lecture. This can be helpful, because students are able to tweet their ideas before forgetting them (my mind is easily sidetracked during discussions, for many reasons), and with the questions/thoughts visible to everyone, students can ponder the tweets a bit before they respond, or before the tweet is even acknowledged. The most effective use of Twitter I have seen in class is when a student could not be physically present, she was digitally present. She contributed to class discussion through Twitter, while multiple students tweeted her back to keep her involved. This digital dialogue was immediate and viewed by the entire class on the projector.

I am fascinated by creative uses of technology to educate and disseminate information; this is one of the many reasons I'm studying Public History. Based on my experiences with Twitter and graduate school thus far (I had a grand total of two tweets prior to my enrollment in grad school), I consider Twitter an intriguing tool. In the effort to gain another perspective, I found Eva Kassens-Noor's article,"Twitter as a teaching practice to enhance active and informal learning in higher education: The case of sustainable tweets." While I have linked the article, you may not be able to view it since it is a scholarly work; I accessed it through UNC Charlotte's library. This is a great article that begins by explaining formal and informal active learning, along with the advent of Web 2.0. Active formal education is exactly what one expects in higher education. This includes engaging the student during class, such as a class debate. Informal active learning, then, is involving students in the learning process outside of class. It seems active learning is the opposite of a professor lecturing AT you for hours on end, never allowing the student to participate. Twitter, YouTube, blogger, and Wikipedia are some examples of websites possible because of Web 2.0 and are also potential tools for informal active learning. The author then discusses her small classroom comparative study to gain some insight about the pros, cons, and most suitable environments for the use of Twitter in increasing active and informal learning. Ultimately, Kassens-Noor concludes that Twitter is an effective active and informal learning instrument that has some advantages over traditional methods, yet some disadvantages exist. She explains:

The advantages lie in that Twitter can foster the combined knowledge creation of a group better than individuals’ diaries and discussion, because Twitter facilitates sharing of ideas beyond the classroom via an online platform that allows readily available access at random times to continue such discussion. The disadvantages of Twitter lie in constraining critical thinking and self-reflection because of the tweets’ character limit.

She supports some of the same things I realized in my own experience, yet she further points out that the assignment given in a class dictates the effectiveness of Twitter. For example, if an assignment involves a lot of critical thinking and reflection, Twitter would not be a suitable tool. Of course, we must keep the limitations of this small study in mind. I still think this article brings some valid information to the table, much of which my informal learning experience supports. Twitter is certainly a beneficial tool for the classroom, inside and out. Based on Kassens-Noor's article, it seems the instructor needs to understand how and when to use Twitter to further engage students and help prepare them for the increasingly digital world in which we live.

Politics, Technology, and the Historian

While corporate scandals, such as CEO John Thain spending $35,115 on a toilet for his office in 2009, have been in the news during this recession, it seems many Americans do not expect similar issues to arise within institutions that preserve and disseminate intellectual information, such as the Smithsonian. At least, I hadn't thought about it until reading this article from the American Historical Association. Until he resigned in 2007, Lawrence M. Small was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution's board of regents for eleven years. Along with many other poor decisions, Small engaged in "lavish expenditures such as a $13,000 conference table, two $2,000 chairs, and $31,000 for upholstery during renovations of Small's office at the Smithsonian. Small also received over $1 million in reimbursement over a six-year period for use of his home for Smithsonian-related activities." Small's resignation and 'legacy' resulted in the need for a new, trustworthy secretary. The author of this article, Lee White, argues a historian should hold this position, instead of a scientist. Scientists have disproportionally held the secretarial post in the past, and I agree with White that a historian is a wiser choice. While it has no bearing on how corrupt they are, I think the training a historian endures allows them to accomplish the tasks of a Smithsonian secretary more effectively than a natural scientist. Politics are a powerful portion of history, so historians have deeply analyzed and reanalyzed various political environments in various times and places. This understanding best prepares the historian for such a position in the intensely political world we live in today.

Another article I read from the same AHA page mostly considers the impact of technology on history and information through other works. The article was written in 2007, and as the editor ponders this question: "Will the advent of better handheld e-book readers that can hold dozens of books portend the death of the old-fashioned book or the printed journal?", I became acutely aware that I was reading from my Kindle. This article was published only five years ago, yet I just read it on my Kindle Fire, a now popular e-book device that also integrates applications (apps) and the internet (essentially transitioning it into a tablet). And considering the fact the editor anticipates e-readers storing "dozens of books", it is clear that even the writer discussing the quick growth of technology and the resulting impacts could not imagine the widespread devices we use on a daily basis, or fully comprehend the immediacy of technological effects. My Kindle Fire has the capacity to store thousands of books. At the moment, my brain is struggling to let this contrast between the expected and the surpassing reality sink in, and this is coming from a person who works with technology and readily assumes its perpetual and brisk change.

While most of the other points the editor mentions seem to be old news now, the editor does contrast linear reading with different methods of online reading. I hadn't given this much thought before, but what if linear reading becomes a traditional way of learning, or becomes obsolete? It seems my generation has largely embraced new forms of technology; tablets and smartphones (including the explosion of Apple products) are immensely popular. Even though I am fascinated by technology, I was initially skeptical of e-books. I thought there would be a disconnect in my comprehension when using an electronic device to read, since it lacks pen to paper contact and the navigation throughout the book is so different (but still a linear progression). I actually acquired my Kindle from my Grandma as a graduation gift, in part because she enjoys her Kindle so much. This certainly demonstrates the influence of technology and its ability to transcend generational differences. Now that I've owned a Kindle for a few months, I'm beginning to prefer my Kindle over paper books. I definitely prefer the Kindle editions of the historical monographs I've been reading for graduate school. I am able to work through e-books much faster, since I can quickly type notes within the book, and if I'm not sure of the meaning of a word, I can simply rest my finger on the word and the definition pops up. I am able to stay immersed in my reading with my Kindle, while I am easily distracted when constantly cycling through the monograph I'm reading, my notepad for notes, and my laptop for Google/Dictionary. So, if tablets, e-readers, and even smartphones (with their apps/internet access) continue to increase in popularity, will the way we read and learn eventually shift away from a linear progression? The possibilities for different ways of absorbing information using the internet and technology are endless. As our society becomes increasingly digital with new techniques for dissemination, will analog forms such as history books and physical museum exhibits coexist or become obsolete? What will we see next? Or should we (most likely) waste our time guessing?

Wikipedia: Reality As a Commodity?

As Wikipedia continues to make a vast amount of information accessible to (and manipulated by) anyone who has internet access, the usability of Wikipedia is an interesting issue for education. In high school and in college, I've had many teachers specifically address Wikipedia. They normally warned against using Wikipedia as a source and often said to avoid it all together. Some colleges, such as Middlebury College in 2007, have forums to discuss the issue of Wikipedia. Many good points were made during the Middlebury discussion, and I have some insight based on my regular use of Wikipedia. Middlebury began their forum with a clip from The Colbert Report, in which Stephen Colbert discusses "wikilobbyists." Wikilobbists are people/groups (Colbert gives Microsoft as an example) that pay people to edit certain wikipages, ensuring those pages contain information controlled by the lobbyist. This is one glaring example of how information in Wikipedia can be biased or affected in negative ways. Wikipedia is certainly not a scholarly source and should not be considered as such. Yet, I view Wikipedia as an effective tool. I often use it to begin my historical research, because Wikipedia gives a nice overview of topics. It helps me find a place to start and get ideas. Often times the sources cited on Wikipedia are legit, so I can build from there once I've verified the validity. But I never actually use Wikipedia as a source in my works, only as that initial tool.

Wikipedia: Women in science page

To continue this discussion, my class about digital history wants us to view some history pages on Wikipedia and discuss what we see. I went to Wikipedia and to ensure I stay on track, I clicked the category 'History.' I selected 'History of science' since that's where my interests lie. One of the featured pages is 'women in science,' so that is the first history wiki page I am viewing. Beneath the heading, this page reads, “This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (July 2011).” I'm on Wikipedia relatively often, and I've never seen that message about layout before. The first two sections within the page (Ancient history and Medieval Europe) both have small notices that the sections need expansion. After scrolling down, I've realized almost all the sections have that notice. This is understandable, but disappointing.

Wikipedia: Discussion page for women in science

The discussion page for women in science appears very different from the regular article page at first. I have never looked at a 'talk' page before. Every wiki page has a talk section, which allows contributors to discuss methods to improve the regular page that is viewed by most people. By looking at Talk: Women in science, it seems the brownish-box at the top of the page contains all the important information one would need to know before they begin to add to the Women in science article. This information box contains basic guidelines, such as "Be polite,"  but also  explains the article's relation to the rest of  Wikipedia, and rates the quality and importance of the regular page.  I'm glad the women in science article is considered high-importance! As I scroll past that initial box, the talk page is arranaged just like a regular article in Wikipedia, but the headings are things like: People to include, Collaboration of the month, and Structure. There are obviously people working on and editing the women in science page. 

The other two historical pages and associated talk pages I consider on Wikipedia are Karl Marx and the Age of Enlightenment. Since these pages are laid out like the Women in science page, I have not posted screenshots. Both of these pages are much fuller than Women in science. The contents sections about Marx and the Enlightenment are organized differently, to serve the purpose of explaining a person versus a movement. Within the Talk:Karl Marx page, there is a notice in the information box that this is a controversial issue and a reminder to be neutral. I think it is good that this is there; at least Wikipedia tries to get people to contribute valid information. I like that a search box is also included here, to allow contributors to search past  discussions/arguments about Marx. I am initially surprised that there is such a small amount of discussion here, but the information box points out that this is accepted as a good history page. Since this page is good, there doesn't need to be a lot of discussion, contrasting the Women in science page. There is hardly anything in the information box on the Enlightenment discussion page. It only contains the basic policies, mentions that it was a featured article candidate, and suggests other related articles that need attention. Yet, there is nothing about it being a "good" page, which seems strange. There is an abundance of discussion here, which may explain why it is not considered good. The contents section for the talk page contains twenty-six items! One person blatantly calls this a "sorry excuse for the Enlightenment," arguing that many vital points are not included. I think this is a positive thing though, because it should lead to positive improvements. Viewing the discussion side of Wikipedia articles definitely adds to my understanding of Wikipedia. While I will continue to use it as a tool, I will now include the talk pages. The discussions give further insight into how/why an article is constructed a certain way and why some information is left out or included. It's a guide in which one can literally see how much work has been put into a topic.

The Playboy Contract...

For my class on digital history, I have to work with two classmates in creating an online exhibit. We must utilize UNC Charlotte's archives, so my group is basing our project on the collection of Playboy magazines available. The contract for this project, essentially outlining our goals, tools, and schedule, is due later today. The contract was completed yesterday, but I would not say it is finalized.

Creating our contract took a bit longer than I anticipated, but we got it done. Samantha and I had to do a lot of brainstorming to begin our contract, since our focus was redirected towards the cliche topic of sexuality. We originally wanted to examine American social movements during the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of Playboy, following the women's movement (including sexuality), the civil rights movement (MLK Jr. interview in 1965 issue!), and the movement that spawned from the Vietnam War (creation of hippie, drug, anti-war culture). These ideas morphed into the categories of female sexuality, male sexuality, and black civil rights...but civil rights obviously does not fit here. We wanted to include the black civil rights movement in our project, because there is a surplus of relevant material in Playboy that gives an interesting point of view, but Samantha and I could not think of a logical way to link sex, sex, and race within Playboy. Maybe Samantha and I weren't creative enough, but we felt forced to exclude anything other than sexuality. The mission statement of our contract reads, "In our exhibition, we will explore the perceptions of male and female sexuality through the lens of Playboy magazine in the mid 1960s through the late 1970s..." This is exactly what one would expect from an analysis of Playboy, but still somewhat interesting.

Once we finally had our mission statement, Samantha and I were able to complete the rest of the contract. We had to keep it rather vague, since we were missing a group member, and we were not entirely sure what to anticipate. Neither of us have created an online exhibit before, or dealt with metadata. I hope our schedule is reasonable, but we will probably have to include further specifics once we get a bit deeper into the project. I look forward to the actual research: flipping through the magazines to figure out what I want to use in the exhibit. It's so interesting! Although, I think narrowing the material down and actually deciding what to use and not use will be difficult. I'm also excited about playing around with the web aspect of the site and learning about various digital tools. Making the schedule made me realize that an immense amount of effort, time, and communication must go into this project for it to be successful. Everything that has to be done is intimidating, but breaking it down into pieces should make it manageable.