In her 2021 article “Throwaway History: Towards a Historiography of Ephemera,” scholar Anne Garner discusses John Johnson (1882–1956), a devoted collector of items intended to be discarded, including bus tickets and campaign pamphlets. Johnson recognized that scholarly institutions considered his expansive collection of ephemera to be worthless—indeed, it wasn’t until 1968, after Johnson’s death, that Oxford University’s Bodleian Library acquired the collection, having grasped the items’ potential value to historians and other researchers. Hence, the example of Johnson serves to ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Explanation
Context: John Johnson collected ephemera (bus tickets, pamphlets) considered worthless by scholarly institutions in his lifetime. After his death, Oxford's Bodleian Library acquired the collection, recognizing its potential value. The blank states what Johnson's example therefore serves to do in Garner's discussion.
Answer: D) illustrate both the relatively low scholarly regard in which ephemera was once held and the later recognition of ephemera's possible utility.
Why? Johnson's story has two parts: institutions dismissed ephemera during his lifetime (low regard), and then Oxford acquired the collection posthumously (recognition of utility). D captures both aspects of the example.
Traps:
- A) demonstrate difficulties contemporary historians face → the example is historical, not about contemporary challenges
- B) represent the challenge of incorporating ephemera into the historical record → about the mechanics of incorporation, not the shift in scholarly regard
- C) lend support to arguments by historians who contend ephemera is valuable → Johnson's example shows the arc from dismissal to recognition; C misframes it as pure advocacy