14 March 2012 – John Dichtl
Welcome to History@Work, a blog to represent the wide range of voices within the public history field. Consultants and contractors, graduate students, curators, archivists, and federal, state, and local historians, professors, and new professionals in all sorts of institutions and settings are invited here to catch up on news, weigh in on developments in the field, and share expertise. Read More
14 March 2012 – Cathy Stanton
As I was working on getting ready for the beta phase of “History@Work,” I took on the task of freshening up the public history blogroll that we’ve used at “Off the Wall” for the past year and a half. This turned out to be a sobering exercise: it turns out that close to half the blogs we were following have shut down or become inactive (including, just recently, the venerable Cliopatria). Read More
14 March 2012 – Briann Greenfield 7
The Connecticut Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (CCCPH) has followed the AHA’s announcement of the “Tuning” project to establish core competencies in history with great interest. We believe this project will provide faculty with the time and resources to reflect on the essential skills of history and applaud the AHA’s attention to education. Read More
14 March 2012 – Zachary McKiernan 7
social justice, public engagement, memory, publicity, museums, human rights, international, politics, Letters from Chile, advocacy
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Zachary McKiernan, a doctoral student in public history at the University of California/Santa Barbara and a regular reviewer for “Off the Wall,” is working on a series of “Letters from Chile,” based on his current dissertation research. Read More
14 March 2012 – Adina Langer 3
2012 is an ambitious year for NCPH, marking the launch of a true locus for our craft on the World Wide Web: the “History@Work” blog located on the new digital Public History Commons. Like the field of public history, this space will take advantage of every phase the Internet has to offer: its content delivery mechanisms will be multi-faceted, its content fluid, and its reach will encompass the entire cloud. Read More
27 December 2011 – Adina Langer 1
For most of us, music videos don’t immediately bring to mind historical engagement. What’s more reflective of the current epoch than a viral YouTube video featuring feline euphony or Rebecca Black’s ultra-present-focused “Friday”?
But Arcade Fire’s “Wilderness Downtown” collaboration with Chris Milk, featuring their hit 2010 single, “We Used to Wait,” is a remarkable exception to this rule. Read More
19 December 2011 – Will Walker 4
The Smithsonian is, of course, not the only institution associated with the federal government that maintains an archive about its own history. The National Park Service, for example, has made a substantial investment in documenting the histories of its parks. Read More
07 December 2011 – Margo Shea 6
Read MoreMaps are more than pieces of paper. They are stories, conversations, lives and songs lived out in a place and are inseparable from the political and cultural contexts in which they are used. (A. Warren, cited in Giacomo Rambaldi, “Who Owns the Map Legend?
28 November 2011 – Mary Rizzo 1
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| The Toynbee Tiler’s main style, in Philadelphia’s Center City. |
At its heart an exhibition is a display of objects, grouped together by a shared theme, style or message, and designed for public consumption. In the award-winning 2011 documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, four men from Philadelphia search for the creator of an idiosyncratic series of public art pieces that, in its consistency and repetition, can be seen as an exhibition. Read More
08 November 2011 – Zachary McKiernan 2
I have been traveling to and from Chile for various reasons at various times since 2005, acquiring a deep appreciation for the country and its cultural subtleties and social mores—to say nothing of a Spanish accent steeped in Chilean slang. But if I have learned anything since my initial days, it is that one must exercise sensitivity when approaching the dictatorial past. Read More