28 February 2017 – editors
From around the field this week: Critical heritage studies in Arkansas; poetics and politics of museology in Havana; conference of humanities council in Boston; half-century retrospective on Nigeria-Biafra War history/memory; registration open for conferences on digital collections and living history; workshop on historic house museums; summer ethnographic fieldschool on a Mexican island Read More
27 February 2017 – Kirsten Delegard and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg 3
Not so long ago, few historians knew anything about GIS, or geographic information systems. Many of us saw little need to learn complicated software built on scripting languages and databases. We retreated to the familiar environment of the archives, leaving the technical challenges of GIS to geographers and computer scientists. Read More
24 February 2017 – Jean-Pierre Morin
For the past seventeen years, I have worn two hats every day that I’ve gone to work. The first one is my historian hat, as I’m the staff historian for the Canadian department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs where I research the history of the institution, prepare materials for public consumption and answer questions relating to the 260-year history of Canada’s policies towards Indigenous peoples. Read More
22 February 2017 – Elizabeth Belanger
Over the past weeks my project colleagues have provided glimpses into public history’s “Radical Roots.” In these posts, key figures and sites have emerged: Gene Weltfish at the American Civilization Institute of Morristown, the campers and counselors at Camp Woodland , and Louis Jones at Cooperstown Graduate Program. Read More
20 February 2017 – editors 1
Patrick Cox, Ph.D., is an award-winning, nationally recognized historian, author, and conservationist. A sixth-generation Texan who resides with his wife Brenda in Wimberley, Texas, he is president of Patrick Cox Consultants, LLC. His firm specializes in historical research and projects for individuals, corporations, legal firms, and nonprofit organizations. Read More
17 February 2017 – Melissa Marietta
On November 9th, I put my kids on the bus and cried in the shower. I was embarrassed by my own visceral reaction to the news of the election and tried to recover for my day in the office. What I soon discovered, however, was that I was not alone in my shock, grief and anger. Read More
15 February 2017 – Rachel Donaldson 6
How closely is public history tied to academic history? Judging by the historiography of public history, it would seem that the answer to that is “very”; after all, the generally accepted view is that the field came into its own in the 1970s directed by formally trained academic historians. Read More
14 February 2017 – editors
From around the field this week: A new Chief Historian for the US National Park Service; conferences on oral history (Australia), women’s history (Texas and Indiana), religion and public memory (Canada), museums and human rights (Argentina); summer field schools in Italy/Greece and Ukraine; big new book on museum blogs. Read More
13 February 2017 – editors
For more than two centuries, Americans have come together every July 4th to celebrate national unity. What happened during the deeply divided Civil War era? How did Americans commemorate their nation’s birthday as the nation was falling apart? A new project called Mapping the Fourth attempts to answer these questions. Read More
10 February 2017 – Matthew Barlow 8
I was reading in The New Yorker a few weeks ago about the “museumification” of rock music. The article was about an exhibit on the Rolling Stones in New York City, Exhibitionism!, and the curator, Ileen Gallagher, was talking about her experiences at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Read More