At Ohio Wesleyan University, I teach an upper-level medieval history course, “Constantine to Charlemagne.” This is an undergraduate class, with 18 students of varying backgrounds. The course addresses a time period (ca. 300-850) often slandered as barbaric and backwards, so my goal is for students to see the richness, texture, and vibrancy of the period along with the political and economic troubles that befell certain areas. Read More
In 2006, when I arrived as “the public history hire” at DePaul University, in Chicago, my charge was to create an undergraduate public history concentration for history majors. At the time, the only public history course actively being taught was “Introduction to Public History,” a lower division course that served the university’s general education requirements.
Providing assistance to individuals considering careers in consulting remains an ongoing task of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) Consultants Committee. In October 2012 and September 2014, forums held on Versatile PhD opened up discussions that generated valuable data that Consultants Committee members are using in devising initiatives to achieve this end. Read More
In recent months the NCPH Council of Past Presidents has discussed ways to honor some of the individuals who founded the National Council on Public History in 1980. As a result, at the 2015 NCPH Annual Meeting in Nashville, G. Wesley Johnson and Robert Pomeroy will receive the inaugural NCPH Founders Award, and they and others of the first NCPH generation will be invited to participate in an oral history project to be organized by the Council of Past Presidents.Read More
Recently I attended two “Wikipedia Edit-a-thons.” The name evoked images of committed scholars and students gathered together to pursue an all-nighter that would generate scores of new articles, hundreds of meaningful edits. What actually transpired was the opportunity to address questions of public history and online scholarly identity. Read More
In 2002, Richard Moe, then president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP), asked a troubling question in the Forum Journal: “Are There Too Many House Museums?”[1] Subsequent publications, conferences, and other forums have debated and reiterated Moe’s concerns that house museums are–besides facing dismal financial straits–too often “tired, antiquated, and disconnected from their communities.”[2] Read More
As public historians, we have many responsibilities, but, as a baseline, we are charged with making history relevant, meaningful, and accessible to amateur historians, students, families, and scholars alike. Read More
This is the fourth post in a series on issues of diversity in the public history field. Each post in this series is based upon oral interviews conducted with public history professionals. Each interview was conducted in a traditional interview question and answer format.Read More
This is the third post in a series on issues of diversity in the public history field. Each post in this series is based upon oral interviews conducted with public history professionals. Each interview was conducted in a traditional interview question and answer format.Read More
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