History@Work

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• The public history of the Flint water crisis (Part 1)

  editors

  Environmental Racism and Lead Poisoning in Flint I study environmental justice movements, both contemporary and historical. Lead (along with asthma) has been a central urban environmental health issue in the US that hits racial minorities and working-class people particularly hard. Lead is often thought of, for that reason, as an example of environmental racism. Here, […]

• A public history role for building bike lanes in cities?

  David Rotenstein

  Gentrification: It’s not just for sociologists and anthropologists any more. Though historians have been making inroads documenting and interpreting gentrification and displacement, there are abundant opportunities for historians to make significant contributions in public policy and planning. One recent kerfuffle involving proposed bicycle lanes and African American churches in Washington, DC, provides a window into […]

• A side or B side? Postindustrial artisans walking a fine line (Part II)

  Cathy Stanton

  Continued from Part 1. So how did the small-scale artisans at Fringe fit into the proposals put forward by the master developer candidates at the March meeting? The short answer is: ambiguously. They were clearly seen by the developers as both part of the hipness of the neighborhood and part of the set of problems–what […]

• Embodying the archive (Part 1): Art practice, queer politics, public history

  Julia Brock

  “All we have to open the past are our five senses.  And memory.” ~ Louise Bourgeois We public historians are increasing our fluency in languages.  We are conversing with colleagues across the globe and across disciplines, we are ever dexterous in our work with new media, and we are constantly strengthening the ways we reach […]

• "Don’t frack our history!" Using the past for environmental activism in northeastern Pennsylvania

  Jeff Robinson

  “I am from a small agrarian town in northeastern Pennsylvania – just south of Binghamton, New York and north of Scranton, Pennsylvania,” is what I told people in Boston when I first moved to New England to start graduate school in 2008.  After all, with the exception of a few folks I serendipitously encountered from […]

• An urgent call to action in Aysén, Chile: Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas 1367

  Zachary McKiernan

  [EDITOR’S NOTE:  Zachary McKiernan, a doctoral student in public history at the University of California/Santa Barbara and a regular reviewer for “Off the Wall,” is working on a series of “Letters from Chile,” based on his current dissertation research.  An overview of the series, framing its purpose and context, will follow shortly, but because of […]

• Preservation conversations: When history at work is history at home (Part II)

  David Rotenstein

  Before the mid-1960s, except for domestics and a few other exceptions, South Decatur was exclusively white. It was a place Decatur’s blacks knew to not be after sundown. They knew that they were welcome to clean houses, cut lawns, and bag groceries there during the day but the suburban dream being lived by their white […]

• Preservation conversations: When history at work is history at home (Part I)

  David Rotenstein

  What if after you bought the historic house of your dreams in a neighborhood that billed itself as “historic” you found out that your definition of historic clashed with that of your new neighbors? As a historian with nearly thirty years under my belt in history and historic preservation, that’s precisely what happened in 2011 […]

• Preservation conversations: Looking for broader partnerships at the National Trust

  Priya Chhaya

  There are two sides sides to historic preservation. On one side preservationists work to save places, using community character and history to enhance the quality of living through transportation, smart growth, and sustainability. On the other we are seen as obstructionist, the party of “no,” and a limiting factor to the development and modernization of […]

• A point paper from the Public Historians and Sustainability Working Group

  Leah Glaser

  The following point paper was developed by participants in the Public Historians and Sustainability Working Group, which met in Milwaukee in April 2012.  The paper is currently being circulated to the National Council on Public History Board, and the Working Group invites comments on it here as well.  A separate posting with links to public […]