Let’s talk about work: an invitation to participate in the “Empowering the Public History Workplace” working group at the 2023 NCPH meeting in Atlanta

10 April 2023 – Andy Urban and Alena Pirok

From Amazon and Starbucks unionization drives to the waves of strikes that have roiled higher education in recent months, American workers are thinking critically about labor and moving towards action. Museum and historical site professionals are no different. Projects like Art/Museums Salary Transparency 2019, and Instagram accounts like Museumworkersspeak, and Changethemuseum, have stimulated the conversation among art museum workers, but public historians have been comparatively silent. Read More

Repairing National Register nominations: educational institutions and the National Register process

28 July 2020 – Michelle McClellan, Carolyn Barske Crawford and Leah Glaser

Authors’ Note: This is the third of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations. (The first post highlighted technical matters and the second discussed underrepresented communities and the integrity criterion.) Read More

Repairing National Register nominations: underrepresented communities and integrity

21 July 2020 – Sarah Kautz, Rachel Leibowitz and Joanna Doherty

Authors’ Note: This is the second of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations.  (The first post focused on technical matters.) In this series, we’ll highlight best practices we developed—using our working group member case statements as a starting point—to encourage frequent revisions of National Register nominations. Read More

Repairing National Register nominations: technical matters

14 July 2020 – Heather Lynn Carpini

Authors’ Note: This is the first of three posts resulting from discussions of our 2019 NCPH annual meeting working group on improving existing National Register nominations. In this series, we’ll highlight best practices we developed—using our working group member case statements as a starting point—to encourage frequent revisions of National Register nominations. Read More

Feminism unfinished: Finding work-life balance as public history parents

09 June 2020 – Andrea Ringer and Brandi Burns

“Public History Parents: Leaning In, Opting Out, and Finding a Work-Life Balance” is a working group created in conjunction with the 2020 National Council on Public History (NCPH) annual meeting. It formed to address the unique needs of parents in the public history field. Read More

Who Makes a Nation? Rethinking “A Nation of Immigrants”

11 March 2020 – Michelle Moon and Kathryn Lloyd

Authors’ Note: As you may be aware, NCPH annual meeting status has changed. We are planning to proceed with the group’s work, though we are not sure as to format as yet. We will talk with co-facilitators when we have a sense of the remote alternatives and be in communication with NCPH and prospective participants about the plan. Read More

A Greener Conference in the Peach State

10 March 2020 – Philip Levy, Carolyn Barske Crawford and Alena Pirok

Editors’ Note: This is the second of two posts by leaders of the National Council on Public History (NCPH)’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability. You can get involved by attending the Green Meetings Working Group session on Saturday, March 21, at the annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Read More

How can we reduce conferences’ carbon footprints?

27 February 2020 – Philip Levy, Alena Pirok and Carolyn Barske Crawford

Editors’ Note: This is one of two posts by leaders of the National Council on Public History (NCPH)’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability. You can get involved by attending the Green Meetings Working Group Session on Saturday, March 21, at the annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Read More

Meeting people where they are: Reinterpreting Freeman Tilden

31 October 2019 – Nick Sacco 2

Editors’ Note: This is one of two posts reflecting on a working group that met at the 2019 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting in Hartford, Connecticut.

In his 1957 book Interpreting Our Heritage, Freeman Tilden attempted to provide one of the first working definitions of what it means to interpret history and nature to public audiences. Read More

Reinterpreting Freeman Tilden’s Interpreting Our Heritage

19 September 2019 – Allison Horrocks 1

For the 2019 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, I had the pleasure of coordinating the Interpreting Our Heritage in the 21st Century working group with public historian Nick Sacco. Our goal was to take a fresh look at Freeman Tilden’s foundational text, Interpreting Our Heritage (1957), and to consider whether it required “repair work,” which was the annual meeting’s theme. Read More