Tag Archive

profession

Unfamiliar terrain: Reevaluating a landmark’s past (Part 1)

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Through the support of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan, I recently found myself, along with my team of colleagues, navigating unfamiliar territory in the form of partnership with Cliveden of the National Trust to update the site’s National Historic Landmark  (NHL) nomination.  Read More

Measuring up: What employers look for in historical consultants (Part 2)

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In Part 1 of this post, participants in a Northwest History Network professional development program called Who Hires Consulting Historians? talked about some of the “soft skills” that employers look for.  Part 2 is an additional excerpt from the discussion. You can hear a podcast of the entire program here. Read More

Serving two masters: Questions of audience at the Joseph Smith Documentary Editing Project (Part 3)

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Historians working on the Joseph Smith Papers have to navigate a balancing act between our various audiences—much like those who do contract history work. For the most part, the project has succeeded in its attempts to be balanced. In a review of the first volume of the Journals series in the journal Documentary Editing, Kenneth Minkema, executive editor of the Works of Jonathan Edwards, declared, “Readers need not raise a skeptical eyebrow when they see this edition is produced by LDS members and printed by an LDS press.” Read More

Serving two masters: Questions of audience at the Joseph Smith Documentary Editing Project (Part 2)

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In my years as a historical consultant, I did several projects for agencies such as the National Park Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Much like the church for which I now work, these agencies are interested in their past, but also are sensitive to criticisms that have been levied against them by opposing groups, such as environmental organizations. Read More

Serving two masters: Questions of audience at the Joseph Smith Documentary Editing Project (Part 1)

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row of booksSome time ago, I had the opportunity of hearing a presentation by Daniel Walker Howe, a historian who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book What Hath God Wrought: A History of the United States, 1815-1848. In the course of the seminar, Howe made a plea for academic historians to stop ignoring the general public in their work, declaring that it was time for historians to stop talking only to each other and to engage the larger public. Read More

Speaking of the survey (Part 6): Models for a 21st century public history journal

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people looking at documentThis is the sixth and final in a series of posts about the findings of our summer 2012 survey on the current state and possible future directions of The Public Historian journal and other NCPH media.

from Anne Mitchell Whisnant, NCPH Journal Task Force:

As a member of the NCPH task force considering the future of The Public Historian, I, like several of my colleagues, have been mining the data from last summer’s survey about the journal.   Read More

Refining the republic: A discussion on history in the National Park Service

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report coverLast Friday, November 2, 2012, National Park Service personnel, public historians, academics, and graduate students from the Northeast met at the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston to discuss the Organization of American Historians’ recent report Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service (2011). Read More

Speaking of the survey (Part 5): The NCPH journal and digital publishing

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people looking at documentThis is the fifth in a series of posts about the findings of our summer 2012 survey on the current state and possible future directions of The Public Historian journal and other NCPH media.

from Cathy Stanton, NCPH Digital Media Group:

I looked at the question “In what ways would you like to see the possibilities of digital history and digital publishing transform the NCPH journal?” Read More