Author Archive
24 July 2015 – Richard Anderson 2
Last year, I served as research resident at the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM), which focuses on the history of public housing across the country but especially in its home city of Chicago. The NPHM will one day occupy the last remaining building from the New Deal-era Jane Addams Homes in the Little Italy neighborhood. Read More
01 May 2015 – Richard Anderson 2
While researching at the LBJ Presidential Library over the last ten days, I’ve read numerous memos on the use of federal troops and National Guard units to quell the urban rebellions of the late 1960s. It was jarring to turn on the television Monday night and learn that Maryland’s governor had declared a state of emergency and called up the National Guard in response to the protests in Baltimore. Read More
17 November 2014 – Richard Anderson 1
As a public-historian-in-training and recovering theater nerd, I attended last month’s Great Chicago Fire Festival with high hopes. Redmoon Theater–one of the city’s most innovative companies–staged an elaborate pageant on the Chicago River commemorating the infamous 1871 fire that destroyed much of the city. Read More
25 September 2014 – Richard Anderson 2
This summer I traveled to Shanghai, China, with a group of fellow students and faculty from Princeton University for an immersive seminar in public history, memory, and preservation. The trip provided an opportunity to think about public history in a transnational framework, which is important to me for two reasons. Read More
18 March 2014 – Richard Anderson 2
During the coming year the National Council on Public History will prepare a Graduate Program Consumer’s Guide. The Consumer’s Guide will serve as a tool for anyone weighing the pros and cons of pursuing a degree or certificate in public history. Read More
14 February 2014 – Richard Anderson 1
I am a sucker for the drama of the Olympics. Yet while watching the ongoing Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, I have been struck once again by the continuous invocation of the past during the Olympics and–at the same time–the limited historical consciousness exhibited by the International Olympic Committee, national organizing bodies, corporate sponsors, and host cities. Read More
31 January 2014 – Richard Anderson 4
In September of last year,History@Work published a series of posts by Robert Weyeneth, president of NCPH and Director of the Public History Program at the University of South Carolina. Collectively titled “A Perfect Storm,” the posts addressed what Weyeneth identified as a broadly shared concern among public history professionals (inside and outside academia) that a jobs crisis exists in the field. Read More
23 October 2013 – Richard Anderson 1
This summer I prepared to facilitate a series of introductory public history workshops for fellow students in my graduate history program at Princeton. In thinking about how to present a range of formats and venues for public history, I planned to highlight alternatives to the usual, institution-hosted projects–an important message on a hidebound campus such as mine. Read More
25 January 2013 – Richard Anderson 10
Two thousand and twelve was another wrenching year for American workers and labor unions. The time seems right for public historians to recover organized labor’s past and to place that history at the center of our current public policy debates. What kind of year was it for workers? Read More
10 August 2012 – Richard Anderson 2
new professionals, public engagement, scholarship, education, profession, employment, training, graduate students
As I approach my second year of doctoral studies in history, I find myself thinking often about dissertation topics. These ruminations may be premature. General exams have not even clouded my horizon yet. Still, I feel a special burden to choose topics wisely because I hope to secure an academic job teaching in a public history program. Read More