19 April 2016 – editors
From around the field this week: New Routledge textbook on public history practice; reflecting on a massacre in Memphis, Coventry/Dresden reconciliation project in London, and maritime memory in Massachusetts; in search of “the middle” for 2017 National Council on Public History conference. Read More
15 April 2016 – editors
Mike Hollander is currently the acting museum director at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. He has been at the Wisconsin Historical Museum for five years and in his current position for nearly a year. Previously, Hollander was an associate curator at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for four years, followed by two years as exhibitions manager at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Read More
13 April 2016 – Deborah Boyer 1
social media, The Public Historian, TPH 38.1, "Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology" responses, digital media, methods, public engagement, digital history
Digital technology has enabled public historians, cultural heritage professionals, and history students to collaborate with diverse audiences and explore history’s role in civic engagement in ways previously unimagined. The partnership between the Virtual City Project and the Restoration Group described by Andrew Hurley in “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide” demonstrates the exciting possibilities as well as challenges advanced digital tools provide, especially in the face of limited budgets, long software development cycles, and varying levels of digital access. Read More
12 April 2016 – editors
From around the field this week: Registration ends tomorrow for public history boot camp on collections assessment in Camden, New Jersey, U.S.; Visitor Studies Association takes on the Data Revolution; international symposium on Cultural Heritage Conservation and Digitization in Beijing; learning from LGBTQ lives in Oral History Review. Read More
08 April 2016 – editors
methods, entrepreneurialism, consultants, employment, Ask a Practitioner, Ask a Consulting Historian
Jan Dilg is an independent historian and the principal of HistoryBuilt, a historical consulting firm. She works with public agencies, non-profits, and historical organizations on a variety of public history programs, events, and products.
How did you first become involved in historical consulting? Read More
06 April 2016 – Annette Gordon-Reed 14
theater, TPH 38.1, "Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton" responses, race, The Public Historian
This past August, I went with a group of historians to see the much acclaimed, and now Grammy-winning, musical, Hamilton. Our timing was just right. The ticket prices were reasonable (for the Great White Way), costing nowhere near the astronomical sums people pay now. Read More
04 April 2016 – Donna Neary 6
My transition from public history to teaching was unplanned. After twenty-five years of working for local, state and federal governments, museums, non-profits, and as a consultant, I was unemployed, cut loose, and drifting out of sight of the public history mother ship. Read More
01 April 2016 – Jennifer Stevens
Choosing to go into business for yourself means a willingness to ride the ebbs and flows of unpredictability. Some of those rides can be pretty challenging, and the start-up period is no doubt the first and perhaps the most daunting of them all. Read More
30 March 2016 – David Hochfelder
"Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology" responses, public engagement, community history, digital history, The Public Historian, TPH 38.1, digital divide
In his article, “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” Andrew Hurley does the public history community a great service. He does more than tell us a cautionary tale about rushing headlong into digital approaches to public history and leaving target audiences behind. Read More
29 March 2016 – editors
From around the field this week: 20 years after Raphael Samuel’s death, a commemorative conference in London on radical histories; interdisciplinary symposium in Beijing explores the intertwined terms “vernacular” and “heritage”; Texas material culture symposium focuses on transition and change. Read More