Anna Kaplan, Doctoral Candidate, American University
Proposal Type
Panel
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
- Place
- Teaching
- Other: Universities/Colleges
Abstract
Investigating the role college history professor have or have not played in historical interpretations on higher education campuses beyond and including confederate statues. This paper and/or panel would look at untapped opportunities for more public history involvement within the academy aside from course offerings/syllabi. Professors, residing in the middle between the university/”traditional” history scholarship and students/the public, could advertise themselves as an institution’s resource beyond teaching responsibilities. This could also open doors for more recognition in academia of pub. history as scholarly work/publications as well as service during a time when universities are looking to reinterpret and contextualize their pasts.
Seeking
This proposal is open to various means of expansion. I am specifically looking for collaborators wishing to explore this topic and I am not wedded to the traditional panel of paper presenters format. We could each pick a particular case study and present it to the audience or discuss the same example in more of a roundtable format, or something completely different! In addition, any ideas or recommendations for refining the proposal are most welcome.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Anna Kaplan
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
All feedback, and offers of assistance, should be submitted by July 3, 2016.
COMMENTS HAVE CLOSED. PLEASE EMAIL THE PROPOSER DIRECTLY WITH ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS OR OFFERS TO COLLABORATE.
Discussion
2 comments
Comments are closed.
I would encourage you to consider what kinds of work you’d like to see public history professors doing outside of what they already do. It’s not clear from your proposal what you envision. For example, would you like to see these faculty working in a quasi-consultant mode, taking on external work in addition to their teaching, service, and scholarship obligations? Would you envision such external work replacing one role in this trio? Would these faculty take on partial staff appointments? You’ve touched on a major tension here in the field, especially regarding the status of those with academic appointments. The major question here seems to be: “what is the status of public history as scholarship in academia?” I would suggest that public history work often falls in-between the categories of scholarship and service at many universities. Those of us doing it would like it to count as scholarship, but often our status / tenure committees consider it some kind of service. It’s not always peer-reviewed, but it requires far more research and critical thinking than committee-work or other service activities. Perhaps the question then, is not what more can we be doing to serve our institutions, but how can we change the conversation to get what we are doing better recognition? The AHA and other professional organizations have already issued reports recognizing the value of public history work, but still hold it to the same peer-reviewed / blind review standard that we use for articles and books. Getting public history work peer-reviewed is difficult if you’re not at a large or well-known institution. Though I don’t think it could or should be dispensed with completely, because it helps to validate the quality of the scholarship produced. Perhaps we might consider some kind of happy medium, such as a team of public historians who are willing to serve as “reviewers” for public history projects. Those of us needing review might then submit our materials to them– though I fear that creating such a clearing house would result in an enormous backlog of projects awaiting review. It’s a thought.
Good luck with your proposal. I think you’ve touched an important issue and I look forward to the conversation in Indianapolis.
I agree with Jennifer. Your proposal would be stronger if it provided more insight beyond investigating the “role college history professor have or have not played in historical interpretations on higher education campuses beyond and including confederate statues.” What are you trying to get at? Is it political activism? Are you advocating that public history profs engage in a larger role within society to “tell” how folks how they should think about public history or is it specifically targeted towards civil war memorials (of which confederate statues would be one element? I agree that historians occupy a unique and challenging position in interpreting that past. Most are wary of going beyond a boundary of scholarship that attempts to be objective and not wander into the realm of advocacy, but when a broader society seems to be fine with operating within an evidence free environment, historians and their work can be a critical corrective. The crucial question is where is that boundary? Who defines it?