Tag Archive
01 June 2017 – Will Walker
As I made my way through the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s five floors of exhibitions, it was the museum’s effective use of objects to convey both individual and collective narratives and big ideas about history that most impressed me. Read More
30 May 2017 – Will Walker 4
The first time I tried to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture, my friends and I got only as far as the grassy area on the Constitution Ave. side of the building. Less than a month after the museum’s grand opening in September 2016, the feeling around the David Adjaye-designed masterpiece that Sunday was electric. Read More
18 May 2017 – Betsy Newman 1
For the last five years, South Carolina ETV, the state’s public television network, has been experimenting with ways to tell the story of a 16,000-acre undeveloped property called Hobcaw Barony. Hobcaw, from a Native American word meaning “between the waters,” has a long history of human occupation that stretches from Native American settlement through slavery and Reconstruction to the twentieth century, when it became the winter hunting retreat of financier Bernard Baruch. Read More
08 May 2017 – Jim McGrath, Robyn Schroeder, and Inge Zwart
Like “public history,” “public humanities” is a concept that seems relatively straightforward but quickly proves hard to define and explain (especially when we are asked to do so by our friends and relatives). Read More
20 April 2017 – Tammy Barnes and Joseph Cialdella 1
In 2015, the Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan began a two-year project called “Cultural Exchange Coldwater” aimed at sharing the stories and experiences of Arab American residents in this southwest Michigan city. Arab Americans, most of Yemeni heritage, are the largest minority population in this largely white city of 10,000. Read More
18 April 2017 – Priya Chhaya
This past fall in Houston, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gathered for its annual conference, PastForward. One of the key features of the conference is a series of marquee presentations called TrustLive. TrustLive presentations often feature a single speaker followed by a short panel discussion on a topic relevant to today’s preservation movement. Read More
17 March 2017 – editors
After Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premiered in November 2016, my fellow Temple University graduate students Ted Maust and Ariel Natalo-Lifton and I started discussing the proliferation of references to public history and heritage tourism in the popular television program. Read More
08 March 2017 – Judith Jennings 2
“If you just pussy foot around and try to be safe, you won’t get anything done, and they’ll still fire you. Might as well accomplish all you can.”
Sentiments like these earned Helen Matthews Lewis the title of an unruly woman. Read More
06 March 2017 – Jennifer Whitmer Taylor
Believed to be the first museum of Reconstruction in the nation, the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) reopened to the public on February 15, 2014 after being closed for nine years. Rather than focus solely on the life of Wilson, the new interpretation at the museum uses his teenage years living in Columbia, South Carolina as a lens to discuss one of the most misunderstood periods in American history. Read More
01 March 2017 – David C. White
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of posts reflecting on Gregory Rosenthal’s article, “Make Roanoke Queer Again: Community History and Urban Change in a Southern City,” published in the February 2017 issue of The Public Historian, and on how the Roanoke project relates to other LGBTQ public history projects. Read More