To understand how ideas about racial difference took root in American history, Makiki Reuvers, a Ph.D. candidate in history, examines 17th-century encounters between British colonists and Native Americans.

Makiki Reuvers

“History is not just a set of facts and figures,” says Makiki Reuvers, but also the narratives that we tell. 

 

As a Ph.D. candidate in history and, this semester, a teaching assistant for Afro-American History, 1876–Present, Reuvers is interrogating how these narratives get written and by whom. “I always like to talk to my students about how history is written by individuals, by people with their own agendas and perspectives,” she says. 

 

In their first recitation meeting for the course, Reuvers and her students discussed what they’d learned about African American history in high school or other classes. What she noticed in their responses was a pattern about how certain narratives become marginalized, while others predominate. “Some historians refer to this as ‘jack-in-the box history syndrome,’” Reuvers explains, “where instead of thinking about how certain histories can be woven into this broader national narrative, they get talked about as though they just kind of pop up, go away, and then pop up again.” 

 

A scholar of colonial and early American history, Reuvers observes the same patterns in narratives about Native American history. “In early America,” she says, “a lot of the focus is on the formation of an American nation—these questions of revolution and independence—things that really mesh well with what people want to push as the character of America.” 

 

Read the entire story at https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/writing-history