Working Groups

What’s an Annual Meeting “working group”?

NCPH working groups are seminar-like conversations of 8-10 people before and during the annual conference that explore, in-depth, a subject of shared concern.  Working groups have a purpose they are working toward, a problem they are actively trying to solve.  The working group proposal must articulate this as well as an end product(s) that the group seeks to create.

WHAT MAKES A WORKING GROUP UNIQUE? 

Two things.  When a group convenes at the annual meeting, the conversation has already begun. Participants are invested in the outcome. Facilitators have had time to refine their questions and perhaps refocus on the issues.  Second, facilitators lead their group in  developing an end product, such as an article, a list of resources, an exhibit, a manifesto, a white paper, or a new collaborative project.

2015 Working groups

1. After the Administrative History: What Next?
Case Statements
Facilitators: Ann McCleary, University of West Georgia; Bethany Serafine, National Park Service; John Sprinkle, National Park Service

Over the past several decades, more and more public agencies are recognizing the importance of preserving and recording their history. This is the case for the National Park Service, which has been actively promoting the creation of administrative histories for its parks over the past fifty or so years. The idea is that these histories can help the park understand where it has been, including what challenges it has faced and how it has resolved them, and to help guide the staff in the future. Administrative histories of various units and programs of the National Park Service also help to compile a more complete understanding as to how the agency evolved. This working group is designed for NPS and other staff who deal with administrative histories, historians who write administrative histories, and those interested in the history of the National Park Service. Our goal is to explore a variety of questions focused around the key issue:

After the Administrative History: What Next? We envision several issues though we welcome questions and ideas from the participants.

  • How have NPS parks and other entities used the Administrative Histories?
  • What makes a good administrative history? What makes it useful?
  • How can the insights and ideas in these histories be made more available and accessible to the public through programs, publications, etc.?
  • Are there significant differences between NPS administrative histories and those completed for and used by other organizations?  If so, what lessons can we draw from those distinctions?]
  • What sources are critical to writing an administrative history? What will we do as digital records become more common-place? And how essential are the annual reports that the parks no longer complete?
  • How can the NPS draw out some of the issues that develop from these individual administrative histories and incorporate the findings into a more complete understanding of National Park Service history? What are some of the trends and ideas that have emerged to help characterize NPS history through the various decades or periods?

While we have raised the issues above, we want to hear what other topics participants would like to discuss. We envision this working group as an opportunity to accomplish several goals. First, as the NPS works on revising its guidelines for writing administrative histories, the session organizers will prepare a summary of the ideas that come from this group to share with the NPS History Office in Washington. Second, the NPS Academy for Cultural Resource Management is interested in this topic, so we will share our overview with these NPS staff. Third, we would like to write a “Report from the Field” article on this topic for The Public Historian journal. And last, we would entertain submitting a piece on this topic to the History@Work blog.

2. Public History as Digital History as Public History
Group Blog

Facilitators: Sheila Brennan, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University; Christopher Cantwell, University of Missouri-Kansas City; Jason Heppler, Stanford University;                Kyle Roberts, Loyola University Chicago; Brent Rogers, Joseph Smith Papers; Lauren Tilton, Yale University

That digital technology is transforming the work of history is hardly a point of contention. Museums now augment exhibits with new media, librarians curate digital archives, academics mine millions of digital sources with new tools, and educators encourage students to tweet, blog, and tumble their way into history. Yet the totalizing effects of digital history’s rise often obscures important differences in method and practice that lay at the edges and overlaps of these distinct fields. For example, historians employing digital methods might make their work publicly available, yet accessibility does not mean the work is inherently public history. In the same way, online exhibits may be digital by their very nature, but they may miss potential audiences if they do not adhere to best practices in digital humanities.

This working group proposes to explore differences and intersections of doing digital public history and publicly sharing digital history work. It aims to bring together public history educators, digital history practitioners, museum professionals, and students to discuss how these overlapping, yet distinct, fields should learn from each other. Do public historians need to know code? Do digital historians need to know how to share authority?

This working group will open with 15-20 minutes of discussion laying out some challenges. Then, we will break into small groups to discuss the implications of these challenges for our professional positions. These discussions might include:

  • How should we train future public historians in digital methods and using digital tools?
  • How should we train digital historians to consider audience early and to make their work accessible to specific audiences?
  • Are there aspects of the digital humanities that are contradictory to the work of public history and the training of public historians?
  • Who is doing digital public history at their institutions and who is involved in the teaching and training?
  • What digital and public history competencies might students need for jobs today?
  • How do we make publicly-accessible digital projects that are also digitally innovative public projects?

In the final 30 minutes, we will come together to report and summarize our discussions, which will be documented in a draft of best practices, and we will outline a work plan for co-authoring a white paper or article.

3. Free, Separate, Uncertain: Can Public History Play?

Facilitators: Abigail Perkiss, Kean University and Mary Rizzo, Rutgers University-Camden

What does it mean to play with the past? History is conceptualized as a serious intellectual endeavor, but when we widen our lens to include historical re-enactors, games set in the past (from Risk to Assassin’s Creed), fun-filled ethnic heritage festivals and role-playing pedagogical games, it becomes clear that play is a central method through which the public connects with history. Public historians, especially those working with youth, have experimented with play–from teaching visitors historic games to involving them in elaborate role-playing activities–for purposes of education and visitor engagement. Theorists and practitioners in other fields have conceptualized play in a variety of ways that have highlighted unstructured play, open-endedness, contingency, and collaboration. Social justice activists use theater games to address collective problems, often with long histories. Digital humanists describe their work as inherently playful with risk-taking, collaboration, and breaking things at the core. Neuroscientists see unstructured play as the wellspring of creativity and problem solving.

How can public historians incorporate these insights into our work? What can we learn from others (and vice versa) about how to make history fun? How can we make fun meaningful? Can play help us “lift the veil” on the interpretive fluidity of history to more deeply connect with the public? The intention of this working group is to bring together a diverse group of practitioners, theorists, and teachers interested in the intersection between play and public history. Participants may consider:

  • types of play (structured, unstructured, group, etc.)
  • play, failure and the contingency of the past
  • play as prefigurative world-building
  • playing for adults
  • physical play and connections with history
  • play as a tool for empathy
  • digital play with history, from metadata games to augmented reality
  • integrating play behind-the-scenes in program development
  • using play to make museums and other history sites more inclusive and interactive
  • the pitfalls of play–are there topics that shouldn’t be played?

This working group will also work together to produce something. Once the group is assembled, we will decide what that might be. Some possibilities include: a public Zotero bibliography of resources on play and public history; designing a game or other playful activity for the NCPH conference; collaboratively writing about issues raised by play and public history for the History@Work blog (or another publication); or working in small groups during the session on specific problems.

Ideally, this working group will include both public historians and other kinds of publicly-engaged theorists, artists, and practitioners to create a conversation around the possibilities of play for public history. Prior to the conference, the facilitators will convene an online conversation. Accepted panelists are expected to actively participate (in a fun way, of course).

4.  History on the Edge of Nowhere
Group Case Statements

Facilitators: Shae Adams, W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas/Tarleton State University; Courtney Hobson, Darnall’s Chance House Museum (M-NCPPC), Upper Marlboro, Maryland

In this working group we hope to facilitate a group discussion centered on developing creative solutions for institutions lacking direct access to large populations. The working group will be co-facilitated Shae Adams and Courtney Hobson. Shae is the curatorial assistant at the W.K. Gordon Center in Thurber, Texas, with a population of five. Located nearly 30 miles away from the largest population center in the area, the Center relies on Interstate 20 for most visitor traffic, with an average of 5,000 visitors a year. Courtney is a museum assistant at Darnall’s Chance House Museum (M-NCPPC) in Upper Marlboro, Maryland with a population of 637. Despite Upper Marlboro being the county seat of Prince George’s County and located within a major metropolitan area, the rural town is still culturally isolated and most residents of Prince George’s County are not aware of the museum. Before the conference, participants will contribute to a private blog to begin a conversation about the challenges faced in increasing visitor traffic at institutions isolated from population centers. This blog will also include group discussion of what successes the participants have had in attracting visitors to every day tours, special programming, and developing community outreach initiatives. Through this pre-conference discussion, we will refine the topics to discuss at the conference. The working group discussion will address the most common problems faced by public historians on the Edge of Nowhere, possibly including:

  • Ways to increase visitor traffic. This will also necessitate an agreement on the ways in which participants will measure the success of these ideas in their institutions.
  • Ways to engage nearby small rural communities
  • How to increase museum attendance without relying on physical signage or social media

Participants will decide how best to share the results of our discussion and form a sustainable network after the meeting.  This post-conference network will allow continuing discussion while further refining and improving solutions for isolated institutions interpreting history on the Edge of Nowhere.

5. On the Edge of 2016:  Commemorating the Past and Shaping the Future of Federal Preservation Activities
Group blog and case statements

Facilitators: Michelle Delaney, Smithsonian Institution; Barbara Little, National Park Service; Denise Meringolo, University of Maryland Baltimore County; Julia Washburn, National Park Service

The year 2016 is a momentous one for public historians in the United States. The National Park Service will mark the 100th Anniversary of its founding. The National Historic Preservation Act will turn 50. These two landmark moments come just two years after the National Museum of American History quietly marked its own 50th Anniversary in 2014. For several years, professionals in both the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, and interested scholars from outside these institutions, have been engaged in conversations about how best to revitalize their role as cultural stewards, educators and innovators in the 21st century. These initiatives have resulted in a number of internal and external reports –including Imperiled Promise and A Call to Action in the Park Service and the Consortium program at the Smithsonian. While these outcomes have been useful, we would like this symposium to move beyond self-studies and difficult-to-implement initiatives. We envision a symposium that will focus attention on the ways in which creativity, collaboration, and civic engagement are already transforming the value and function of nationally significant cultural sites and resources. We are particularly interested in participants whose work can help draw attention to one or more of the following:

  • International cultural resource collaboration that has lent new protections to endangered resources and new legitimacy to under-represented and endangered perspectives on the past
  • Creative interpretive programming that has transformed a traditional historic place into a site of conscience, or a site of consciousness-raising
  • Projects that have created “parks without boundaries,” sites that have fully engaged local and regional audiences in reclaiming and reframing preservation
  • Ideas about how we might challenge entrenched institutional practices that constrain creativity without endangering or undermining the core mission of national preservation entities
  • Examples of effective, dynamic, and ongoing collaborations among historic places, institutions of higher learning, and other cultural institutions
  • Effective, creative, and fully imagined projects to diversify both audiences and work force in the realm of federal preservation, interpretation, and resource management
  • Innovative and productive perspectives on the history of federal preservation, interpretation, and/or resource management programs and policies

This Working Group will design the form and content for a half-day symposium that will take place on March 16, 2016, as part of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the NCPH in Baltimore. The facilitators are seeking meaningful participation from a variety of public historians to design a dynamic and meaningful symposium. We are committed to planning an event that will not simply commemorate the history of federal preservation, cultural resource management, and historical interpretation, but will, instead, invite open and productive dialog about how federal cultural institutions can put a 21st century vision into action.

Together, the participants in this working group will work to create a symposium that will integrate processes of knowledge sharing with meaningful opportunities for dialog and planning.

6. Pedagogy in Public: Academic Programs and Community Partners
Group Case Statements

Facilitators: Elyssa Ford, Northwest Missouri State University and Debra Brookhart, The American Legion

For many public history programs, it is important to maintain close relationships with community partners. Such relationships offer ways for faculty to remain involved in the community and in the field, real-world projects and experiences for students, a source of internships and assistantships, and the hope of full-time job opportunities after graduation. Yet sometimes these projects leave someone “on the edge” — the students who may be unprepared or uninterested in the project, the community institutions who may not have been included as equal partners or who might find themselves left with an unfinished or unusable project, and even the theoretical basis of the class, which may get pushed to the side in order to complete a client-based project on time. This working group will address an array of issues that often arise in class projects and relationships with community partners. To do this, we want to avoid getting stuck in the cycle of individual project “show and tell” and instead will push participants to think about larger questions, including:

  • How to initially find community partners and create those relationships, how to maintain those partnerships in a healthy way, and what to do when problems arise.
  • What is and should be the purpose of projects and partnerships like this? Is the focus bringing hands-on experience and practice to students? Is it fulfilling a professional, usable end-product for a client? Is it based more broadly on the idea of civic engagement and offering a service to our communities?
  • What are community partners looking for in these relationships? Are they worthwhile to the organization? From their viewpoint, what needs to be done to promote better relationships and communication streams? These partners are often left “on the edge” or the periphery of project formation and completion, so it is important to bring them to the center of this discussion.

We want to think broadly about all of these questions, promote discussion, and offer some tentative answers in order to establish a set of best practices that will help academic programs and cultural institutions move forward in creating these relationships in a more mutually beneficial way.

We welcome and encourage participation from (1) public history professors who already engage with community partners or who are considering reaching out to the community and establishing partnerships, (2) individuals and organizations who have been involved in these relationships as the community partner or those who are interested in beginning one of these relationships, and (3) students who have completed class/individual projects and internships and who can discuss their readiness to undertake the project, the process itself, and the benefit (if any) it brought.

7.  Religion, Historic Sites, and Museums

Facilitators: Melissa Bingmann, West Virginia University and Barbara Franco, Gettysburg Seminary Ridge Museum

Presenting the history of religion in a historical context is an important means of making historic sites and museums relevant and for facilitating discussion of issues of social justice. At a time when academic historians are focusing research on the history of religion and Americans express high interest in religious subjects, museums remain reluctant to talk about the larger roles of religion in American society and tend to avoid complex or difficult topics that are perceived as too hard to convey to public audiences. Historic communities of by-gone religions, like the Shakers and Harmonists, have only recently begun to include religious beliefs and tenets in their interpretations. These and others like the Mennonites and Moravians have preserved sites that have meaning to their religion but often focus on furnishings, the daily experience of communal living, and connections to the broader narratives of American history, especially when they expect outsiders to visit these sites. Other religions, like the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic Church, create historical narratives intended for believers. In the case of the LDS, the preservation and interpretation of sites is specifically for the purpose of building faith among its membership.  In many cases, historians of religion, especially those in the public sector, are working on the edges of proprietary knowledge. A key aspect of this working group will be to bring together public historians working in museums and historic sites, historians dedicated to specific religious institutions/faiths, scholars of the history of religion, and public historians looking at memory and religion to address these disconnects and challenges.  We seek case statements that will introduce the following:

  • Why is it challenging for museums to discuss issues of faith and spirituality with general audiences?
  • How can we convey the energy and excitement of the recent boom in scholarly interest in religious history to general audiences?
  • How can public audiences benefit by learning about and discussing religion and faith?
  • How have various religions been portrayed historically and how have these shaped popular memory?
  • How can history created by religious institutions intended for insiders interface with broader narratives placed in historical context?
  • The role of artifacts in conveying the history of religion at museums and historic sites.

Our goal is to identify others who are interested in exploring greater inclusion of religion at historic sites and museums with the intent of creating a white paper and submitting a planning grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a larger project that could include a symposium, publication, or traveling museum exhibition.

8. Teaching Public History through International Collaborations
Group Case Statements

Facilitators: Na Li, Chongqing University

In July 2014, the first Public History Faculty Training program in China took place in Shanghai, as a result of partnerships between the Center for Public History at Shanghai Normal University, Princeton University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The program covered many common grounds in both cultures, such as public/social memory, oral history, museums, archives, urban landscapes, historic preservation, social/new media, public participation, curriculum design, and etc.  Despite drastically different worldviews, public history issues are quite often similar across cultures. The two-week program also offered opportunities for student and faculty exchanges in an intensely cross-cultural context. Similarly, in 2010, Arizona State University’s Public History Program has been partnering with Sichuan University’s American Studies Program to create exchange programs on teaching public history.

Those recent collaborative efforts on teaching public history face similar challenges. First, language and cultural issues create confusions even breakdowns in communication. Second, different pedagogic philosophy also makes us realize some basic assumptions in our field are not so basic. Sharing authority, for example, does not come easily in classrooms that have long been dominated by one authoritative voice. More important, it is difficult to provide valid intellectual justification for training in public history if the field is attached to a strictly market-driven economy from the start. While it’s yet to be seen if those international collaborations will mature into successful cases for teaching public history, public history remains collaborative by nature, and it continues to push its edge, be it national, cultural, or disciplinary. This working group invites cases about teaching public history through international partnerships. Our discussions, based on the practical experience of such collaborations, will focus on:

  • Specific public history projects in a cross-cultural context
  • As most public history projects are catalytic, instead of conclusive, what factors could sustain those projects?
  • What are the challenges in international collaborations, and how to overcome them?
  • How to utilize urban resources to create cross-cultural public history trainings in museums, archives, urban preservations, and etc.?
  • How to integrate public history as an area into established History Department?

Discussants will comment on the questions outlined above in their case statements and suggest additional questions. We particularly welcome those who are currently engaged in teaching public history internationally. One possible outcome of this working group is an international collaborative forum on teaching public history.

9.      Who speaks for us? Government Historians and the NCPH
Group blog

Facilitators: Jean-Pierre Morin, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and Katherine Scott, U.S. Senate Historical Office

The NCPH has, over the years, worked to represent and bring into its fold all types of Public Historians and numerous committees established to respond to the interests of its members, such as the consultants committee, the curriculum and training committee, and the new profession and graduate student committee. Many of these committees were established for the express purpose of providing professionals with similar interests a vehicle for networking, discussion, and advocacy, within NCPH specifically, and more broadly, within the larger historical profession. One group, however, is conspicuously unrepresented: public sector or “government” historians. These historians work in different and somewhat unique environments. Their status as “public employees” also impacts their ability to engage in the same manner as non-government historians, and they are sometimes left on the margins of Public History. While these members represent a sizable percentage of the NCPH membership they currently have no formal voice within the NCPH. Few sessions during annual meetings are dedicated to the specific concerns and unique challenges of working within a government structure. Is it time for a “government historians committee”? This working group, constituted of government historians from the U.S. and Canada, and representing all levels of government, will examine three key questions:

  • Are government historians properly represented at the NCPH?
  • Do we need a “government historians committee” or “task force”?
  • How could a “government historians committee” contribute broadly to the NCPH mission?

To ensure the greatest level of discussion, the conversation amongst the working group is open to government historians beyond the working group itself. The working group will then submit its findings to the NCPH Board for its consideration.