Audience analysis and the role of the digital in community engagement

22 March 2016 – Kerri Young

As a public historian working on the collaborative digital platform Historypin, I second Andrew Hurley’s assertion, in his article “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” that introducing more traditional methods of engagement can, and most often is required to, enhance the efficacy of the digital tools within a public history project. Read More

The public history of the Flint water crisis (Part 1)

04 March 2016 – editors

Environmental Racism and Lead Poisoning in Flint

I study environmental justice movements, both contemporary and historical. Lead (along with asthma) has been a central urban environmental health issue in the US that hits racial minorities and working-class people particularly hard. Lead is often thought of, for that reason, as an example of environmental racism. Read More

Jack the Ripper Museum

19 November 2015 – Claire Hayward

In August 2015, a museum that had originally been billed as “the first women’s museum in the UK” opened instead as the Jack the Ripper Museum on Cable Street in the East End of London. ‘Jack the Ripper,’ an anonymous figure who murdered and mutilated at least five women in the late nineteenth century, has become the focus of a museum that had once been promised to represent and celebrate untold histories of women. Read More

Leo Frank commemoration: Museum partnerships and controversial topics

17 November 2015 – Anna Tucker 7

As museums increasingly become spaces for engaging challenging topics, three metro Atlanta institutions joined together to address a century-old rift in the community. Using expanded audiences, a shared strategic mission, and a network of public historians, the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History forged a partnership with the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum and the Museum of History and Holocaust Education to present the exhibit, “Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited.” Read More

Pennsylvania’s hallowed ground: A role for historic preservation

06 November 2015 – Brenda Barrett 1

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation. 

The saga of the Locust Grove Cemetery, an African American burial ground in the small borough of Shippensburg, is one that is repeated across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Read More

Engaging to preserve: Building a preservation-minded community through Twitter

29 October 2015 – Caroline Nye Stevens

Over the course of ten weeks this past spring, I explored, blogged, and tweeted my way through twenty of Providence’s endangered properties. The challenge came to me by way of the Providence Preservation Society (PPS), which is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their Most Endangered Properties (MEP) program this year. Read More

A Confederate on campus: The case of MTSU's Forrest Hall

27 October 2015 – Elizabeth Catte

Editor’s note: This post continues our series addressing recent debates over Confederate memory and symbolism in the wake of the shooting of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.  Here is the opening post for the series. Read More

The room is now so still

08 October 2015 – Juan-Fernando León

This post had its genesis in an undergraduate course, “Doing Local and Community History” (taught by Amy Tyson) at DePaul University in Spring 2015. Through the course, the author, then-senior Juan-Fernando León, partnered with the Frances Willard Historical Association in Evanston, IL.  Read More

No mere morality play: Why we need Confederate memorials now more than ever

29 September 2015 – Ashley Luskey 5

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of posts addressing recent debates over Confederate memory and symbolism in the wake of the shooting of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.

In the wake of the June 17 shooting tragedy in Charleston, SC, numerous cities, institutions, politicians, and members of the general public have engaged in an array of important discussions about Confederate imagery and iconography. Read More

The fifty-year stumbling block

22 September 2015 – Carroll West

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation. 

Assessing properties for listing in the National Register of Historic Places is rarely an easy process. Read More