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
Typically, the origins of public history education have been traced either to early twentieth-century applied history programs or to the first named public history program established in the 1970s at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Neither group of founders understood public history as a distinct field. Read More
Public history education is exploding, with new graduate and undergraduate programs appearing every year–or so it seems. The National Council on Public History has long supported the professionalization of public history education by developing best practices documents for public history programs and other resources for educators. Read More
Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of blog posts commissioned by The Public Historian on the topic of history and the interpretation of climate change in the national parks, extending the conversation on history in the national parks during this centennial year begun in its November 2016 issue. Read More
The American Yawp, the profession’s first multi-authored open textbook, contains thirty chapters and almost 300,000 words. It covers everything from indigenous creation stories to Instagram. How, with historical input accelerating and the scope of scholarship expanding, could any individual or small group of historians hope to capture the breadth of American history and to do so as expansively as a textbook demands? Read More
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
Jeff Sellers serves as the curator of education at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, TN, and has been there since 2005. He is past-president of the Inter-museum Council of Nashville and currently serves on the National Council On Public History New Professional Award Committee. Read More
Editor’s note: This post concludes a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a part article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation.
Historic preservation exists to tell stories of our journeys as a people and as a nation, but somehow along the way the stories of America’s African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities are erased or obscured as historians and preservationists tell the great American story. Read More
As I’ve read obsessively the news of campus protests these past few weeks and shared support for protesters both publicly on social media and privately in email conversations with college administrators, I’ve been challenged to think deeply about my position as both a public historian and a faculty member at a state university. Read More
In a surprising turn of events, the College Board re-revised the Advanced Placement United States History curriculum framework, releasing its newest version at the end of July. While the move by the Board, which had instituted a public comment period seeking feedback on the framework back in February, is not overly surprising, the reaction among many historians and among the opponents of the original revised framework is. Read More
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