A call for resources on sexual harassment and gender discrimination in public history

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The National Council on Public History (NCPH) board-led Subcommittee on Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment is collecting a list of resources to share with public history professionals. During this month’s virtual NCPH Annual Meeting, please join us in assembling and assessing resources on topics of gender discrimination and sexual harassment to empower public historians to take action when necessary at work, to provide resources on these issues to those who teach and train public historians, and to provide resources to anyone in the field who has been a victim of sexual harassment or gender discrimination. Read More

Still grinding? How the pandemic is accelerating job precarity in public history

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Job precarity has become a defining feature of the public history field in recent years as workers grind through extractive cycles of unstable, part-time, and temporary work. A 2017 survey on Public History Education and Employment compiled by NCPH, AASLH, AHA, and OAH reported that “respondents noted that contract work has become more common, permanent positions less numerous, and part-time and term employment ubiquitous.” Read More

Our Side of the Tracks: Community Curation of Black History in Acworth, Georgia (Part 2)

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The second of two installments in a series exploring the development of the “Our Side of the Tracks” exhibit at Doyal Hill Park in Acworth, Georgia. Part One described the origins of the project, starting with the partnership between Kennesaw State University’s Department of Museums, Archives and Rare Books and the city of Acworth, Georgia, as well as providing background on developmental changes over the past 40 years in Acworth’s historically Black neighborhoods. Read More

The Art of (virtual) gathering: Considering audiences with purpose and intention

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For the last fifteen years I have worked as a public history digital content creator. Much of my work has been learned on the job as I engage with the tools and technologies of multi-disciplinary storytelling—and more recently, consider how technology facilitates community engagement with history in both public and intimate settings. Read More

Coffee Tables Books, Pulp Fiction Covers, and Courtroom Photography: Finding & Understanding the Art in Historical Interpretation

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Art was how I first encountered and understood history. Today, as a doctoral candidate researching the transnational legal history of juvenile justice in the American borderlands, I explore the history of the surveillance and policing of youth in places such as public schools, places of worship, and social services through historical visual sources and my own multi-media art. Read More

Our Side of the Tracks: Community Curation of Black History in Acworth, Georgia (Part 1)

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The first of two installments in a series exploring the development of the “Our Side of the Tracks” exhibit at Doyal Hill Park in Acworth, Georgia, Part One describes the origins of the project, starting with the partnership between Kennesaw State University’s Department of Museums, Archives and Rare Books and the City of Acworth, Georgia, as well as providing background on developmental changes over the past forty years in Acworth’s historically Black neighborhoods. Read More

Reflections on (relatively) rapid-response programming

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Last year, in my role as the membership coordinator for National Council on Public History (NCPH), I had the pleasure of helping put on several virtual programs in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Soon after lockdown began and public history institutions started cutting hours and furloughing or laying off staff members, at NCPH we asked ourselves, in the spirit of rapid-response collecting, what could NCPH do for struggling public historians? Read More

Centering African American history in a public history course

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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