Teaching Public History to Sophomores

09 February 2018 –

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In my undergraduate public history course at the State University of New York at Cortland, sophomores usually make up the majority of students. Several of these students have not yet taken our “welcome-to-the-history-major” historical methods class. Our history department requires all our majors to take Introduction to Public History (HIS 280) in order to graduate, and students only need one history survey course before they sign up for this class. Read More

Over-the-hill canes and ideal bodies: teaching disability history as public history

07 February 2018 – 4

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Editor’s note: The post is the sixth in a series commissioned by The Public Historian that focuses on essays published in TPH that have been used effectively in the classroom. We welcome comments and further suggestions! If you have a TPH article that is a favorite in your classroom, please let us know. Read More

Around the Field February 7, 2018

07 February 2018 –

From around the field this week: The online journal and database Women and Social Movements in the United States is seeking volunteers to write biographical sketches of women suffrage activists for their Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States; the ACLS has opened a new fellowship and grant program for community college faculty; the Association of African American Museums’ conference proposal deadline is this Friday; an upcoming webinar on collections storage projects. Read More

Five ways we can do better to respond to crises in our communities

05 February 2018 – 3

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Editor’s note: This is the first post of a series that continues the conversation begun in the February 2018 issue of The Public Historian with the roundtable “Responding Rapidly to Our Communities.”

When the Virginia Tech tragedy took place in April 2007, I was an adjunct at Virginia Tech (VT) and the general manager of an art house movie theater that touted itself as the “heart of Blacksburg”—located just steps from the Drillfield, VT’s version of a quad. Read More

Around the Field January 24, 2018

24 January 2018 –

From around the field this week: the National Park Service requests comments from the public on draft significance statements for the Stonewall National Monument; the Society of American Archivists announces awards with a nomination deadline of Feb. 28; Active History is looking for authors for a new monthly series on history pedagogy; the Italian Association of Public History seeks proposals for their second annual conference by early February. Read More

Afterlife of a factory

19 January 2018 –

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Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on deindustrialization and industrial heritage commissioned by The Public Historian, expanding the conversation begun with the November 2017 special issue on the topic. 

Living in Scotland but researching and writing about France, I’m often struck by the differences in the way in which deindustrialization figures in the public imagination in these two places. Read More

Yoga among the ruins? The challenges of industrial heritage in postwar Pittsburgh

12 January 2018 –

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Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts on deindustrialization and industrial heritage commissioned by The Public Historian, expanding the conversation begun with the November 2017 special issue on the topic. 

At its peak, the Carrie Furnace of the massive, sprawling Homestead Steel Works was a bastion of American industrial might, belching flame and smoke around the clock and employing hundreds of men in the dangerous, grueling work of producing more than one thousand tons of iron per day. Read More