Tag Archive
08 April 2021 – Linda Eben Jones, Chris Ann Gibbons, Bobbi Rahder and Samantha Williams 1
In January 2020, the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum opened in Carson City, Nevada. Since the boarding school’s closure in 1980, former students and their families had urged the state of Nevada to commemorate alumni experiences as a means of recognizing their trauma and need for healing. Read More
12 March 2021 – Kristyn Scorsone
The National Council on Public History (NCPH) board-led Subcommittee on Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment is collecting a list of resources to share with public history professionals. During this month’s virtual NCPH Annual Meeting, please join us in assembling and assessing resources on topics of gender discrimination and sexual harassment to empower public historians to take action when necessary at work, to provide resources on these issues to those who teach and train public historians, and to provide resources to anyone in the field who has been a victim of sexual harassment or gender discrimination. Read More
11 March 2021 – Rachel Boyle
Job precarity has become a defining feature of the public history field in recent years as workers grind through extractive cycles of unstable, part-time, and temporary work. A 2017 survey on Public History Education and Employment compiled by NCPH, AASLH, AHA, and OAH reported that “respondents noted that contract work has become more common, permanent positions less numerous, and part-time and term employment ubiquitous.” Read More
16 February 2021 – Evan Faulkenbury
On the evening of November 12, 2020, during a live Zoom call with seven other people, I spoke rapidly about history, excitedly displayed some photographs, and waved my arms around. That’s my usual teaching demeanor—whether in person or online—but I wasn’t teaching undergrads. Read More
11 February 2021 – Danielle Lehr Schagrin
As we grapple with the short-term (and potentially long-term) impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis on museums and cultural institutions, public historians across the field are dealing with layoffs, staff reductions, and decreased funding. And when non-history job prospects arise, offering higher salaries, healthcare benefits, and the ability to work from home, many face a difficult choice: to hold out for a position in public history or pursue opportunities in a different field. Read More
04 February 2021 – Andy Urban 1
Editors’ Note: For more on labor relations at the Tenement Museum, check out the forthcoming May 2021 issue of The Public Historian.
In recent years, the number of unionized workers within the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy has grown steadily. Read More
21 January 2021 – Will Walker
On December 21, 2020, as part of the omnibus spending bill, Congress approved a National Museum of the American Latino (along with a Smithsonian Women’s History Museum).[1] This approval came after a previous effort was blocked by Senator Mike Lee of Utah who argued that such efforts to create new museums were divisive and that the existing Smithsonian buildings—not separate new ones—were the appropriate places to explore histories of Latinx people and women. Read More
14 January 2021 – Gregory Samantha Rosenthal 1
Over the past several years, many of us have participated in conversations about the prevalence of gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the public history field. This behavior has occurred at conferences, in workplaces, and in educational settings, among consultants, audiences, frontline workers, students, and others. Read More
15 December 2020 – Nick Sacco
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is as good a time as ever for every museum and historic site to devise strategies to make public history more accessible. For public historians—as with many other industries related to travel and tourism—this year has been filled with chaos, uncertainty, prolonged furloughs, and unemployment. Read More
03 November 2020 – Hannah Jane Smith and Suzanne Fischer
Editors’ Note: As of September 9, 2020, all positions listed on the NCPH jobs page must include a salary, salary range, hourly rate, salary code, or some other measure of compensation. In this essay, NCPH graduate assistant Hannah Jane Smith and board member Suzanne Fischer cover some of the reasons why the Board made this change. Read More