Around the Field – June 4, 2025

From Around the Field this week: Latinos in Heritage Conservation closes endangered site nominations this week; The Association for Gravestone Studies hosts their annual conference this month; The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts will host a webinar on their new preservation glossary in two weeks. Read More

Around the Field – May 21, 2025

From Around the Field this week: The Association of Midwest Museums finalizes nominations for their 2025 awards; The Society for History in the Federal Government will host their annual meeting next week; The George Wright Society will be hosting a webinar “National Parks Culture: Art, Placemaking, and Belonging” next week. Read More

Around the Field – May 7, 2025

From Around the Field this week: The Association of African American Museums wraps up nominations for their 2025 awards; the National Humanities Alliance and Federation of State Humanities Councils have extended proposals until May 11, 2025; NCPH will co-host an AAPI Digital Public History Project Showcase. Read More

Editor’s Corner: Indigenous presence and memoryscsapes

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Editors’ Note: We publish the editor’s introduction to the May 2025 issue of The Public Historian here. The entire issue is available online to National Council on Public History members and others with subscription access.

This issue features two research articles and two reports from the field. Read More

Finding their voices: the Williamsburg Bray School scholars’ legacy

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Editor’s Note: This article is the author’s personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of Colonial Williamsburg.

In February 2023, I began working at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF). At the same time, an original structure then known as the Williamsburg Bray School was being moved from the College of William & Mary onto the museum property at the corner of Nassau and Francis Streets. Read More

Around the Field – April 23, 2025

From Around the Field this week: The Organization of American Historians has extended proposals for their 2026 conference “Re-Thinking American History at 250” to April 29, 2025; Seattle University hosts “Race, Racialization, and Resistance: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Humanities”; the 2025 National Humanities Conference has extended their call for proposals to May 11, 2025. Read More

Is It a Farce or Is It History? Native American Playwrights as Public Historians

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Not long ago, I described Native playwrights as public historians because their plays speak directly to audiences, their narratives confront the past as well as illuminate it, and playwrights bring life to histories Americans have forgotten or perhaps never learned. Whether through comedy or drama, satire or farce, Native playwrights are bringing complex histories to the stage. Read More

Navigating the Complexities of Public History in a Changing Legislative Landscape

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Sixty-five public historians gathered at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to discuss the state of public history in the U.S. South in October 2024. These historians came from across the South—the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee—for the NCPH mini-conference co-organized by Ian Beamish, Julia Brock, and Liz Skilton. Read More