Collegial questioning: A new forum on history in the US National Park Service (Part 1)

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Editor’s Note:  On November 6, 2013, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers University-Camden convened a public forum to explore the changing presentation of history in US national parks.  The gathering took as its starting point the 2011 report “Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Parks,” which has sparked other similar conversations over the past year and a half (for example, this one a year ago in Boston).

In this three-part series, some of the participants in the event reflect on the state of the conversation about history in the Park Service and their personal and professional takeaways from the gathering.

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skeleton of house

Outline of Benjamin Franklin’s house, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo credit: Shana L. McDanold.

Charlene Mires, Director, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities

At the forum at Rutgers-Camden, the Imperiled Promise report framed the conversation, but it was clear that we had turned a corner from reviewing its findings to thinking about its implications for our work.  The event created time and space for discussion and reflection on individual practice. Whatever may occur at the level of agency reform, change will require action on the ground by individuals such as those who participated.  I hope that ways will be found to highlight their transformative work as models for the future.  While I was glad to see how the conversation is evolving, I also came away from the forum concerned about the need to widen the circle of participation.  Nearly all of the university-based scholars who attended were faculty in public history programs — what will it take to interest more of our colleagues?  If the state of history in the national parks cannot muster greater attention within the profession, what are the chances of building public and political support for the resources that the Imperiled Promise report identifies as essential?In some ways our forum was like a reunion of great friends from various projects I have been honored to participate in over the past few years.  The National Park Service, and those of us who care about it, will need to continue to make new friends.

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park visitor center

Tumácacori National Historical Park, Arizona. Photo credit: Sean Svadilfari.

Lu Ann Jones, Staff Historian, Park History Program, National Park Service

Imperiled Promise is shaping two NPS efforts that promise to address the authors’ concerns about “historical expertise and today’s workforce,” the “history/interpretation divide,” “a history workforce for the future,” “fixed and fearful interpretation,” and “civic engagement, history, and interpretation.”

The first is the History Initiative, a part of the Academy for Cultural Resources that NPS Learning & Development is creating.  A team of NPS history practitioners is developing a curriculum that explores the nature and value of historical thinking, the particular ways that history is done in the agency, and the importance of historical thinking to resources management, site interpretation, and policy decisions.  Most of the Academy’s courses will be online, self-directed, and asynchronous, and yet we will use social media and an online “commons” to link learners in real time. The History Initiative’s initial planning meeting came at a fortuitous time, in May of 2012, soon after the launch of Imperiled Promise, and the report has served as a touchstone ever since. Two of the report’s authors, Anne Mitchell Whisnant and Marla Miller, joined the team and have remained active partners.

The second way that recommendations of Imperiled Promise can have a Service-wide impact is through “A Call to Action,” the agency’s strategic plan as we head toward our Centennial in 2016. For the past two years, an interdisciplinary team has been charged with helping the Park Service “excite and involve new audiences in the exploration of the full diversity of the American experience by conducting history discovery events, projects, and activities that invite them to explore and share their heritage, using a variety of participatory methods.” 

The team has used Imperiled Promise to develop concise guidelines and best practices to help parks, programs, and partners develop exemplary projects.  We hope to share these advisory documents soon.  But to my mind the materials we’ve developed are the best summary of Imperiled Promise we have, and they offer a strategy for encouraging and creating change.

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field with horses

Farm field at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio. Photo credit: Maitri.

~ Angela Sirna, Ph.D. Candidate in Public History, Middle Tennessee State University and Public Historian in Residence, Catoctin Mountain Park

Prior to the forum, I heard that the Northeast Region has taken up Imperiled Promise as a banner to make strides in its history program. I was anxious to hear new perspectives since most of my experience working for and with the National Park Service is in an entirely different region. I was refreshed to see a strong agency turnout at the forum, particularly because sequestration severely crippled federal attendance at the last few conferences I attended. Overall, there was a great mix of academics, public historians, graduate students, and professionals from various disciplines who contributed to an open, lively, energetic, and engaging discussion.

Throughout the experience I kept ruminating over the same question: what is it about the institutional culture of this NPS region that allows it to embrace Imperiled Promise and engage in such a forum? This makes the second forum in two years that the Northeast Region has talked about Imperiled Promise, while other NPS regions have not had formal conversations. From our perspective while at Rutgers, a few practical considerations became apparent, namely the density of historic sites and number of universities in the area. Expansive regions in the West would have a hard time bringing a big crowd together from far-flung parks. But the National Capital Region also has a high density of historic sites and universities, yet it has not held a similar symposium on Imperiled Promise. Therefore, I suspect that personalities and pre-existing relationships also played a major role. The efforts of Charlene Mires and Mandi Magnuson-Hung at MARCH also gave the NER the support and forum it needed to have this kind of open conversation.

One of the many takeaways from this conference for me is that regional conferences like this one may become crucial in light of new budgetary concerns.

2 comments
  1. Danny Younger says:

    When are you expecting the website for the NPS Academy for Cultural Resources to be up and fully functional?

  2. Lu Ann Jones says:

    Thanks for your interest. I can’t say when the website will be fully functional. Designing these courses takes time and we’re still in the planning and early scripting stages.

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