What good is theory in public history?
30 September 2014 – Cathy Stanton
Photo credit: mlcastle
Prompted by Suse Cairn’s June musings on whether museum professionals need theory in their working lives, we posed the same question via social media about public historians and gathered a handful of responses:
I think theory and reflexive thought is fascinating and, ideally, useful for planning project goals and critiquing ourselves as authors. In grad school, though, it seemed easier to discuss both theory and practice because we had down time together in work-like spaces of computer labs and student lounges, and, with similar classes, we were coming to the discussion with similar background information. Those factors seem harder to find or create in work situations. ~ Elizabeth Almlie (Historic Preservation Specialist, South Dakota State Historical Society)
I am the sort of person who loves theory, and in particular, I love the intersection of theory and reality. This is something I try to bring into my public history practice; I think and read a lot about theory, and I try to connect it with my practice while also allowing the practice to inform and develop my own theory. I think theory is important for understanding how and why we do what we do; although I’m tired of the phrase, I think it’s key to being a reflective practitioner. The essential thing, however, is that theory should grow and evolve alongside practice. In my work, it’s what keeps me on track and helps me see the big picture; it’s what helps me let a community drive a project forward while ensuring that it remains a public history project rather than an outlet for local political agendas or grievances. It keeps the work of public history on task. ~ Abigail Gautreau (PhD candidate, Middle Tennessee State University)
Once I became a ‘historian,’ abandoning American Studies for a job and work, I found theory less welcome and more cumbersome. It underscores my work (when my work is good) but it is invisible. ~ Denise Meringolo (professor, University of Maryland Baltimore County)
I find that I cannot escape questions of power whenever I’m doing history at any level, nor can I really escape it in my quotidian life. And I think that in order to be successful intellectuals, let alone public intellectuals, we need to understand power in a refracted light, near impossible to fully pin down, and open to the idea that it comes from multiple angles at any given time, and it’s a both/and thing (I got that idea from Joep Leerson), we can both have power and be oppressed by it. ~ Matthew Barlow (professor, University of Massachusetts)
Looking over our colleagues’ thoughts, Mary Rizzo added this:
We can’t really talk about THEORY, but theories. And they can have real-world effects. When we look at the LGBT rights movement in the U.S., it happened hand-in-hand with queer theory. If we look at third-world feminism, there’s theory that’s been part of the conceptualization of activism by those women… I think we’re all seeing theory as debating the finer points of Foucault but, in reality, a lot of the stuff we take intellectually for granted that comes out of theory would be news to most people, like the idea that race and gender are social constructions… Theory seeps into how we think and, therefore, do public history that isn’t even obvious to us because it’s so ingrained.
This admittedly small sample seems to suggest that at least for these theory-friendly public historians, theory serves as a backdrop to what they do and a tool for understanding the settings where they work.
We found ourselves wondering how widely this sensibility is shared around the field and whether it relates to generational identity (has the proliferation of graduate programs in public history had an effect on how people think about theory?) and disciplinary centers of gravity (for example, are people trained in history departments less likely to embrace theory as a tool than people from American Studies or museum studies?).
We invite your thoughts below. We’d also be interested in hearing which theoretical works you find most useful in thinking about and practicing public history.
~ Mary Rizzo is Co-Editor of The Public Historian and Public Historian in Residence at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University-Camden. She blogs at maryrizzo.net and tweets @rizzo_pubhist.
~ Cathy Stanton is Digital Media Editor for the National Council on Public History.
I think I’m more on the anti-theory side, not because I don’t find benefits in reading theory, but because I’ve found that the work of theoretical scholars on the subject of museums is sometimes not grounded in good historical research. Consequently, “museum theory” can be unfair to practicing museum folks. I agree that theory needs to inform what we do, but in my admittedly biased view, the grand theories that have been applied to museum work are often crafted by non-practitioners and less than helpful. So, I guess it’s really two separate issues: 1) Can theory be helpful to
public history practitioners? and 2) Has theoretical literature fairly represented the work that we do?
Thanks for this, Will. To me your comment reflects the insistence on empiricism and contingency that historians always (rightly) bring to the table. I think that as someone who came more out of an anthropology background, I have that same orientation to strong, grounded research, but within a more theoretically-inclined discipline overall, so while I’m wary of more abstracted theories, I don’t think theory and practice are necessarily at odds with each other. Much of whether theory can be useful to PH practitioners may depend on how the theory was built, from the top down or from the ground up.
Although I am not a public historian, I teach in a Master’s department with an emphasis in public history. I agree with Matthew Barlow’s and Mary Rizzo’s comments above. At this point in the historical profession, is it even possible to write a syllabus completely uninformed by cultural studies, critical race theory, feminist theory, or queer theory? I suppose it would be if one were to assign only books published before 1970, but who the hell would want to teach that course, and how the hell might we imagine that it would help our students?
I find that it’s actually even easier to demonstrate the relevance of theory (or per Rizzo’s intervention, theories) when teaching students immersed in public history questions because the effects of critical practice are immediately apparent to public historians compared to published academic research. Our books and articles take years to get read, get reviewed, and to influence our students and colleagues, but those who design museum exhibitions, manage a house museum, work on a preservation board, or organize archives see the results of their work much faster. As Barlow said above, how can we work as responsible historians without thinking about power all of the time?
One of my favorite books to teach in our intro to the practice of history course required of all of our M.A. students is Shelley Ruth Butler’s Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa (1999; 2007). Whether one works in public history or not, the book raises fascinating and disturbing questions about the use of postmodern theory in museology and the ways in which the top-down culture of the Royal Ontario Museum was at odds with the purpose of the controversial decision.
Count me among the “traditional” academic historians who has learned so much from working with my colleagues and students in public history, and who sees them as engaging much more difficult and sophisticated questions than most academic historians. You are the cutting edge of the profession–if only the rest of the profession would wake up and admit it.
The blowback against theory and conceptual literature seems to be rooted in the demands of students as consumers to see their universities prioritize hands-on, in the trenches training. And that is completely understandable. I am interested to see his question continued at the program-level.
But, I honestly feel – as someone who has bumped around graduate school culture for almost a decade – that students who have been exposed to theory and the big ideas of public history do better work. And they can promote and sell their work better as well. Theories and big ideas provide them with the framework for connecting their practice to the work of others, common ground for productive intersections, and a shared vocabulary for engaging with other disciplines.
For what it’s worth, I find theory a useful way for engaging our really longstanding and unanswered question – who is the “public” in public history? Examining this question through the lens of sociologists like Erving Goffman (The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life), Daniel Boorstin (The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America), and Dean McCannell (The Tourist, The Ethics of Sightseeing) helped me understand a bit better why the public seeks out the experiences we offer at our cultural institutions.
Thanks Cathy and Mary for a provocative post! I could not practice or teach public history without theories. As others have already said, it’s difficult to think about gender, race, class, nation, sexuality without engaging with theory.
When I’ve worked at public history sites, theory (critical race, feminist, and post-colonial, especially) was invaluable for two major reasons. First, when interpreting history that majority cultures have systematically marginalized, theory (in addition to old-fashioned historical close reading) helped me provide a scaffolding on which to construct interpretation. Without insights gained from scholars working in cultural studies, I would not have been able to pry open these objects, texts, and narratives to reveal a more complex past. Second, theoretical insights helped me understand the cultural power wielded by museum and historical sites. Community groups with whom we collaborated were acutely aware of the enormous power of the museum to either make their narratives appear legitimate or to exclude them from the story. Theory helped me see these dynamics and not discount them as quirks of individuals’ personalities or “drama.”
I’ve been increasingly aware of public historians discussing theories that have been helpful to them in their work. For example, at the 2013 NCPH annual meeting, Hull House Museum curator Lisa Junkin mentioned using Michael Warner’s discussion of publics and counterpublics in the context of conceptualizing the project, “Report to the Public: An Untold History of the Conservative Vice Lords.” http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/cvl/index.html#!copy-of-about-us/c1r2c And the curators of Out in Chicago have written and presented extensively on the queer theory that underpinned the exhibition and museum programming (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/chicago-history-museums-o_n_1324700.html & Radical History Review Spring 2012). Presentations like these can help break down a common assumption that theory is for the classroom, or that we leave the study of theory behind after graduation.
I would love to see public historians discuss more directly how they are using theory. I’d also be interested in knowing what theoretical interventions public historians think we should be engaging with. To kick it off, my short list includes work on “public feelings” (Erika Doss http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8445230.html & Ann Cvetkovich http://www.anncvetkovich.com/books.html ) and Kevin Quashie’s discussion of quiet and African American culture (http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Sovereignty-of-Quiet,1203.aspx ).
Coming into this discussion after two MTSU doctoral students have already weighed in with their thoughts reinforces my own opinion that theory is part and parcel of effective public history practice and public history education. That said, “theory” is perhaps too scientific a word for the concepts and nodes of scholarly inquiry that inform public history and help us distinguish this field from other fields of history. As a full-time PH practitioner, many years ago, the lack of any theoretical grounding made it difficult for me to articulate the purpose of public history. As a public history educator, therefore, one of my goals has been to identify and understand what sets public history apart as a field. And, for me, it is a bundle of ideas and concepts that have been expressed by scholars, practitioners, and observers since the beginning of the twentieth century. I have found inspiration in the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, James Harvey Robinson, Benjamin Shambaugh, and other New/Progressive Historians who advocated for the utility of history in the modern world; of Lucy Salmon, who taught her students at Vassar to use material culture as a means of understanding how the past and present are connected; of Carl Becker and a multitude of later scholars who probed the intricate connections between memory and history; of Michael Frisch, who gave us the concept of shared authority; of Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, who asked us to think about the way ordinary people use the past; of the many museum professionals who have taught us that audience awareness is at the heart of good practice; of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who identified specific ways in which human beings, including history professionals, silence the past in order to construct historical meaning; and of Donald Schon, who observed that reflective/reflexive practice is a learned art that comes with conscientious attention to the ways in which knowledge and experience constantly work in tandem to develop expertise.
There are many who think that common sense is the root of effective public history practice. Who can dispute the value of common sense, in life as in professional practice? Yet, this maxim does not really help us understand what public history is and how public historians function in the wider world.