Tag Archive

public engagement

The Read-In: An experiment in Black History Month engagement

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Every year, my college celebrates Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month. These celebrations feature musical performances, student art shows, guest speakers, and panel presentations that touch upon culture, community issues, significant men and women, landmark achievements, and current events. They are high-quality performances that attract large audiences of students, faculty, and members of the public. Read More

Doing collaborative projects with students and community partners

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Recently, Jane Becker initiated a conversation about doing collaborative projects with students and community partners on the public history educators’ listserv. An edited and condensed version of the discussion follows.

Jane Becker: For the past few years, I have developed collaborative projects for my public history graduate students to undertake with community partners.  Read More

"Sustaining Historic Preservation Through Community Engagement": A conversation continued

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At the 2014 annual National Council on Public History conference in Monterey, several of us came together for a roundtable discussion on “Sustaining Historic Preservation Through Community Engagement.” The roundtable was organized and facilitated by Theodore Karamanski from Loyola University and Kristen Baldwin Deathridge from Appalachian State University. Read More

We won’t keep off the grass: A day at the folklife festival

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Coming out of the Smithsonian Metro station on the National Mall, we were immediately drawn to the massive flower plaque bursting with colorful fabric art. Its sound beckoned us, as hundreds of bamboo wind chimes rattled in the breeze. In China, “flower plaques are decorated bamboo structures used for celebrations such as business openings, weddings, or anniversaries.” Read More

Finding the roots of civic engagement in the public humanities

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Editor’s Note: This is the third piece in a series on the “crisis” in the humanities. A post introducing the series can be found here.

When the American Academy of Arts and Sciences makes the case for federal support for the public humanities in its Heart of the Matter report, it relies on arguments about the potential for civic engagement. Read More

Playing the public history jukebox (and letting visitors push the buttons)

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Editor’s Note: In “What I’ve Learned Along the Way: A Public Historian’s Intellectual Odyssey,” outgoing NCPH President Bob Weyeneth issued a call to action to public historians to include the public more fully in our work by “pulling back the curtain” on our interpretive process—how we choose the stories we tell. Read More

Pulling back the curtain and starting a conversation

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At this spring’s National Council on Public History annual meeting in Monterey, California, outgoing NCPH President Bob Weyeneth proposed that it was time for historians to let the rest of the world in on our trade secret about history: that it isn’t a static set of facts, but a matter of “interpretive fluidity” that demands a continual reassessment of what we know about the past.   Read More

Judging History Day: Making history fun and relevant!

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What do exhibits about Marie Antoinette’s fashion and Ayatollah Khomeini’s political action, and websites about the invention of the toilet and the dissemination of the Pentagon Papers have in common?  They are all student entries in the National History Day competition that I’ve had the opportunity to review as a judge over the past seven years. Read More