Author Archive

Suzanne Fischer

Why NCPH will only post jobs with compensation information

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Editors’ Note: As of September 9, 2020, all positions listed on the NCPH jobs page must include a salary, salary range, hourly rate, salary code, or some other measure of compensation. In this essay, NCPH graduate assistant Hannah Jane Smith and board member Suzanne Fischer cover some of the reasons why the Board made this change. Read More

What is the Nominating Committee, anyway?

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The National Council on Public History is governed like many other professional and scholarly societies. It has an elected board with officers, official standing committees, and uses parliamentary procedure along with other widely used non-profit governance tools. Today I would like to introduce you to the Nominating Committee and what we do. Read More

Developing your synthetic powers

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Doing public history, in all its diverse manifestations, requires certain specialized habits of mind. One of the most vital but also the most mysterious is synthesis.

When I begin work on an exhibition, such as the one I’ve been developing for the past two years, I read as many books and talk to as many people as I can, and then–I wait. Read More

Historical diaries find a new platform in Twitter

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Many unlikely and whimsical projects flourish on Twitter, the popular microblogging service just celebrating its fifth birthday. Big Ben strikes the hour (“bong bong bong”), encounters with near-earth objects are automatically updated (the most recent one missed the Earth by about three million kilometers), a parody account for a politician becomes a compelling scifi short story and the Field Museum’s T-Rex, Sue, turns out to have a wicked sense of humor. Read More