07 March 2017 – Tammy Gaskell
Public history as a discipline and as a practice is inherently collaborative. It requires that we share knowledge as well as authority. And the editors of The Public Historian would like you to share your knowledge with us and the larger community of public historians. Read More
06 March 2017 – Jennifer Whitmer Taylor
Believed to be the first museum of Reconstruction in the nation, the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) reopened to the public on February 15, 2014 after being closed for nine years. Rather than focus solely on the life of Wilson, the new interpretation at the museum uses his teenage years living in Columbia, South Carolina as a lens to discuss one of the most misunderstood periods in American history. Read More
03 March 2017 – Linda Shopes and Amy Starecheski
Oral history, like public history, is now old enough to have its own history, its own founding narrative. As one might expect from a field so deeply devoted to challenging incomplete and exclusive narratives, oral historians are now asking what is left out of their own history and filling in some of the gaps they have found. Read More
01 March 2017 – David C. White
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of posts reflecting on Gregory Rosenthal’s article, “Make Roanoke Queer Again: Community History and Urban Change in a Southern City,” published in the February 2017 issue of The Public Historian, and on how the Roanoke project relates to other LGBTQ public history projects. Read More
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