Tag Archive

sense of place

Preserving the history of the mob in Las Vegas

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Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of pieces  focused on Las Vegas and its regional identity which will be posted before and during the NCPH Annual Meeting in Las Vegas in April.

If NCPH members want proof that the mob no longer has power in the city hosting their conference this year, try to find a 99-cent rib special. Read More

Cold War legacies: Preservation and use at historic sites

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of pieces  focused on Las Vegas and its regional identity which will be posted before and during the NCPH Annual Meeting in Las Vegas in April.

Cold War-era historic sites challenge public historians to strike a balance between the need for preservation and the need for continued use. Read More

Public history in the “Battle Born” state

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Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of pieces  focused on Las Vegas and its regional identity which will be posted before and during the NCPH Annual Meeting in Las Vegas in April.

On a cool, quiet morning in late April, we turned off the highway and up the winding dirt road to a green field nestled against the mountains. Read More

Campus Carry and the public history of the gun debate

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In July of this year, Georgia became the tenth state to prohibit public colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons on campus for permit holders. The controversy over campus carry legislation is a relatively small part of the national debate over gun rights and gun safety, but the recent Georgia decision is notable in that the governor used historical arguments in his initial rejection of a campus carry bill. Read More

Project Showcase: Murals of Las Cruces Project

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During the summer of 2015, a group of scholars, students, and artists trekked under the sweltering New Mexico sun with cameras and notebooks in hand to document public murals in the city of Las Cruces. What began as a student project in a public history seminar at New Mexico State University grew into the Murals of Las Cruces Project.  Read More

Public art and history: Silver Spring’s Memory Wall

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In the 1990s, Silver Spring, Maryland, was desperate for economic investment and an image makeover. Next door to Washington, D.C., the Montgomery County suburb had suffered from two decades of disinvestment and white flight. Once a thriving community with a booming commercial district and sprawling inner-ring suburban neighborhoods, Silver Spring had become blighted by vacant storefronts and empty parking lots. Read More

Listening to witnesses: The evolving history of Hobcaw Barony

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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

Sharing Yemeni history in Coldwater, Michigan

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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