Community, Public History, and the Failure of the Whaling Ship Progress

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The importance of community undergirds nearly every corner and crevice of public history. From spatial communities bound by common geography to cultural communities of shared identity and lifeways, we almost instinctively understand that museums, archives, oral history projects, and other public history products require community engagement and engagement with communities. Read More

Incorporating labor history in a public history curriculum

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Grassroots protest and union activism have flourished in the decade since the Great Recession. Labor and working-class history has flourished, too, and is experiencing a resurgent interest among scholars and public historians alike. At our particular historical moment, shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests against state violence and white supremacy, labor history provides context for urgent contemporary concerns about public health, workplace health and safety, economic inequality, structural racism, and social welfare. Read More

Reflecting on the Georgia Incarceration Performance Project

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Editor’s note: This essay is part of a series of reflective posts written by winners of awards intended to be given out at the NCPH 2020 annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Jan Levinson-Hebbard of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia received an honorable mention for the Outstanding Public History Project Award. Read More

Around the Field August 5, 2020

From around the field this week: the Association of Midwest Museums accepts submissions for their awards program; the Southern Historical Association calls for proposals for their 87th Annual Meeting; The White House Historical Association continues their Facebook Live webinar series.

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Repairing National Register nominations: educational institutions and the National Register process

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Authors’ Note: This is the third of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations. (The first post highlighted technical matters and the second discussed underrepresented communities and the integrity criterion.) Read More

Around the Field July 22, 2020

From around the field this week: NCPH extends our proposal deadline for the 2021 Annual Meeting; the International Federation for Public History moves their annual conference, which includes more than 350 public historian presenters from 50 different countries, to next year due to the covid-19 pandemic; artEquity continues a webinar series for BIPOC. Read More

Repairing National Register nominations: underrepresented communities and integrity

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Authors’ Note: This is the second of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations.  (The first post focused on technical matters.) In this series, we’ll highlight best practices we developed—using our working group member case statements as a starting point—to encourage frequent revisions of National Register nominations. Read More

Repairing National Register nominations: technical matters

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Authors’ Note: This is the first of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations. In this series, we’ll highlight best practices we developed—using our working group member case statements as a starting point—to encourage frequent revisions of National Register nominations. Read More