21 May 2012 – Jeanine Mazak-Kahne
Our public history program works to help students develop an understanding of the role that history can play in fostering a sense of community identity. We also train students to practice as responsible and ethical professionals. Service-learning opportunities provide the core pedagogical method for both these goals. Read More
16 May 2012 – Michael Mizell-Nelson 3
advocacy, digital history, memory, environment, government, politics, digital media, preservation, projects
The Southern landscape and many other parts of the United States remain pockmarked with state historical markers that demand reinterpretation or removal. One state historical marker noting the failure of New Orleans’ 17th Street Canal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that Louisiana has landed on the right side of this history. Read More
11 May 2012 – Kate Preissler 4
In the two years that I have worked in my current position as Western Region Engagement Manager with The Trustees of Reservations, I get asked one question more than any other: “What is an Engagement Manager?”
Although I have a short response–“I oversee any point of contact between our properties and the public”–the frequency with which I encounter the question motivates me again and again to contemplate the work of “engagement” and what it really means to “manage” it at our sites. Read More
09 May 2012 – Aaron Cowan 8
“The one thing I’ve learned from this experience about public history is that I don’t want anything to do with it.”
Charlotte–a talented, enthusiastic graduate student in our History department–made this statement as she was reflecting on her first foray into the realm of public history. Read More
07 May 2012 – Morgen Young
It was another great Consultants’ Reception at the annual NCPH Annual Meeting. Dozens of consulting historians and those interested in consulting gathered to network, discuss projects, and recap the conference.
Consultants’ Committee chair Hugh Davidson addressed the crowd and updated everyone on the work of the committee in the last year. Read More
07 May 2012 – Adina Langer 1
These intriguing images, previewed in last week’s “In Search of a Label” post, depict a public artwork by Sheila Klein called “City Yard,” commissioned as part of the development of the Frontier Airlines Center in Milwaukee in the 1990s. Read More
01 May 2012 – John Dichtl 3
At the OAH/NCPH Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, NCPH President Marty Blatt, Vice President Bob Weyeneth, and Executive Director John Dichtl sat down with the chair of the history department at the University of California Santa Barbara, John Majewski, and the Editor of The Public Historian, Randy Bergstrom, to discuss the future of The Public Historian and housing the editorial offices at UCSB in partnership with NCPH. Read More
30 April 2012 – Cathy Stanton
From our colleagues at the History News Network comes this roundup of the public and digital history components of last week’s conference in Milwaukee. Noting the synergy between the realms of public and digital history, HNN’s David Walsh points out that the center of gravity in the conference blog- and tweet-ospheres was clearly with historians working in those realms, constituting “a monopoly of coverage…so complete it could warrant an anti-trust investigation,” he writes (we think that’s a good thing). Read More
29 April 2012 – Adina Langer 1
As the dust settles on a wonderful joint conference for NCPH and OAH, the editors of History@Work would like to introduce what we hope will become a semi-regular tradition. We invite you to clear your minds, open your eyes (or, in the future, perhaps your ears as well) and take a stab at responding to our first “In Search of a Label” post, offering your first impressions, free associations and guesses at significance. Read More
29 April 2012 – Leah Glaser
conference, public engagement, memory, sense of place, environment, sustainability, international, politics
Historians and Climate Change Panel
NCPH/OAH Annual Conference, Milwaukee, April 20, 2012
Panelists discussed specific ways historians can think about and contribute to solutions about climate change. Chair Phil Scarpino (IUPUI) began by asking, “Why should historians talk about the future? Read More