Tag Archive
15 April 2015 – Aleia Brown 7
I have always thought of public history as a tool to assist us in mediating unchartered territory. More specifically, museums can serve as public forums to tackle persistent forms of oppression that have escaped clear resolve. This vision seems particularly relevant today. Read More
03 April 2015 – Kathy Shinnick 1
(Editor’s Note: This post is the second in a series on the Amsterdam Museum. To read the first post, click here.)
“The stadiums are getting fuller and the churches emptier.”
This observation, from Amsterdam Museum director Paul Spies, served as the inspiration for the museum’s intriguing, controversial, and, at times, humorous temporary exhibit Football Hallelujah! Read More
02 April 2015 – Cynthia Renteria 1
sense of place, collaboration, museums, education, human rights, training, politics, advocacy, race, social justice, conference, public engagement, ethics, community history, Hardball History
Hardball history that places historians at the center of politics, advocacy, and activism can be a difficult journey, but it can also be inspiring. My introduction to public history coincided with the 2006 unveiling of a controversial downtown revitalization plan in the city of El Paso, Texas. Read More
02 April 2015 – Yolanda Chávez Leyva 4
collaboration, museums, economic development, race, conference, Hardball History, advocacy, social justice, public engagement, community history, sense of place
“You know who has money to help you.” I responded to this truth by listing three millionaires from whom I would not accept funding for Museo Urbano, the public history project housed in the Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Read More
25 March 2015 – Cathy Stanton 2
politics, conference, ethics, Hardball History, advocacy, methods, social justice, public engagement, profession
To borrow Shakespeare’s phrase, some public history work is born political, some becomes political, and some has politics thrust upon it. Whether we intentionally locate ourselves in controversial settings, have something blow up in our faces, or encounter less spectacular kinds of resistance or misunderstanding, we’re always on the edge of the political, even when we don’t set out to be. Read More
05 March 2015 – Phillip Seitz 1
How can public historians and their audiences come to terms with the traumatic and ongoing legacies of racism and slavery in the United States? This is the question motivating a project I’m currently working on in Philadelphia with a group of ex-offenders, ages 21 to 72. Read More
17 February 2015 – Claire Hayward
2014 saw huge steps forward in representations of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning) lives in public history on both sides of the Atlantic. Projects have been launched in both the United States and the United Kingdom that aim to reveal national histories of LGBTQ lives, highlighting the ways that international conversations about approaches to public history are developing and impacting positively on the practice of public history. Read More
09 February 2015 – Barbara Little 10
Editors’ Note: In 2016, the National Park Service will mark the 100th anniversary of its founding, and the National Historic Preservation Act will have been in effect for 50 years. These two landmark moments come just two years after the National Museum of American History quietly marked its own 50th anniversary in 2014. Read More
29 January 2015 – Jason Steinhauer 12
advocacy, public engagement, media, publicity, archives, education, profession, training, conference
Just as science has Science Communicators, I’ve proposed that history needs History Communicators. The idea of History Communicators, and how public historians may fill these roles, will be discussed in a panel at the National Council on Public History annual meeting in Nashville. Read More
27 January 2015 – Sarah Hudson
As a graduate student of public history who specializes in early America, I spend a lot of time thinking about borders and peripheries, not just the temporal and spatial borders of British North America, but the figurative borders within which the “traditional” American experience is circumscribed. Read More