Author Archive

Adina Langer

Generative AI and historical authority

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We all know what it sounds like—that voice you hear in your head when you read museum labels. It is confident, assured, and direct. It is friendly, concise, relevant, and eminently believable. And, despite many public historians’ attempts to make our work more transparent and let go of traditional didactic authority, the comforting institutional voice is a reason why museums remain among the most trusted sources for historical information decades in the running, regardless of increasing concern about veracity in the wider information environment.  Read More

Grassroots memorialization in Atlanta, Georgia: A conversation with the leader of the Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants Community

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Editor’s Note: On December 6, 2021, the Atlanta City Council adopted legislation to purchase the former site of the Chattahoochee Brick Company (CBC) from the Lincoln Terminal Company, a corporation specializing in fuel transportation. The site had been leased by Norfolk Southern Railway, which had abandoned plans to use the location as a train-to-truck terminal facility when a coalition of local organizations—including Groundwork Atlanta, Proctor Creek Stewardship Council, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Riverwalk Atlanta, and others—protested this planned use. Read More

The Atlanta BeltLine: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

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Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts from members of the Local Arrangements Committee for the NCPH 2020 annual meeting which will take place from March 18th through March 21st in Atlanta, Georgia.

Like many sunbelt cities, Atlanta’s origins are more engineered than organic. Read More

Follow the tags

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Since we launched History@Work in 2012, we have been thinking seriously about the role of tags in navigating the site and improving our readers’ experiences. Tags are terms related to a post’s content that can be used to link that post in the blog’s back-end database to other posts about similar themes. Read More

Editors’ conversation on interpreting immigration, Part 2

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Editors’ Note: This is the second part of a two-part editorial conversation on interpreting immigration in public history.  Part 1 is available here.

AJL: How can public historians effectively take an intersectional approach to interpreting immigration? How can we bring different audiences and stakeholders together? Read More

Editors’ conversation on interpreting immigration, Part 1

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Editors’ Note: Four years ago, outgoing NCPH president Bob Weyeneth called on public historians to “pull back the curtain” on their process. Turning topics of contemporary relevance into public history involves numerous collegial conversations which usually remain behind the scenes. The History@Work editors thought our readers might be interested in the following conversation prompted by Adina Langer’s development of a new exhibition at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University. Read More