Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of reflections from winners of NCPH awards in 2023. Katie Owens-Murphy and Brian Murphy are the recipients of the G. Wesley Johnson Award. This award is named in honor of the founding editor of The Public Historian.Read More
The National Council on Public History has a wonderful guide for students applying to graduate school, but it offers limited advice on how to write your personal statement. Prospective public history graduate students could benefit from insights about what graduate faculty are looking for in these short essays. Read More
I first became interested in public history as a child. My church often had events that celebrated Black history. And at least once a year, my schools would create bulletin boards highlighting the achievements of African Americans. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I knew that I wanted to teach courses that explored how this history has been taught in public spaces. Read More
The ways we preserve history for the benefit of future generations has changed enormously in the digital era. Yesterday we raised statues and planted roadside markers. Today we utilize the vast potential of the Internet to preserve history with online platforms. Read More
When HBO’s Watchmenaired on October 20th last year, it introduced millions of Americans to the explosive episode of racial terror that gripped the black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma from May 30th to June 1st, 1921. The TV show dramatizes how white Americans used guns and even makeshift bombs to destroy millions of dollars in property and murdered an estimated 100 to 300 African Americans over the course of three days (the “aftermath” of which is pictured here).Read More
The Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan have called Ringwood, New Jersey, home for centuries. The surrounding landscape features iron mines, Native American rock shelters, and a forest that provides food for hunters and foragers. But it also contains a stew of different chemical toxicants from the former Ford manufacturing plant, deep pockets of contaminated soil, streams that now flow with orange water, and the Ringwood Mines/Landfill Superfund Site. Read More
Last summer, when offered a rare opportunity to receive funding for course development, I applied for a university grant to test the value of incorporating growth mindset theories into my public history course. At first glance, these two pedagogies did not seem particularly compatible, but I was curious to see if I could combine them to a positive effect. Read More
After moving to a new state and leaving a position as Executive Director of Blount Mansion, a historic house museum, I joined the academic world as an adjunct teaching associate in the history department at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. Read More
Every week throughout the summer, small groups of residents of Missoula, Montana, meet at Caras Park near downtown for history tours called “Unseen Missoula.” One important contributor to the development of the tour program has been the public history students of the University of Montana. Read More
Readers of History@Work may recall that four years ago in this space a group of historians introduced the concepts of “History Communication” and “History Communicators.” Inspired by the investments that the sciences made in science communication, the group theorized that investing in, and strengthening, media skills and communications strategies among historians might prove beneficial to the profession’s future.Read More
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