Michelle Mcclellan, university of michigan
Proposal Type
Roundtable
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
- Memory
- Place
- Local History
Abstract
This session addresses what local history might become during the 21st Century and how can we understand it better as an historical genre that has been a popular and durable form to chronicle the past. This roundtable will examine some of the tensions between academic, public, and local histories (and historians) and explore ways that various constituencies including local residents can value meaningful local history narratives.
The goals of the session are to provide insights into local history, highlight areas of local history where public historians can work effectively, and foster more thoughtful products in that genre without professionalizing the approach in an exclusionary manner.
Description
The threads of local history have been strong and deep as people use them to strengthen the attachments they have to places. Joseph A. Amato has defined local history as narratives about the past in a certain, discrete locale defined by an area that the people written about knew thoroughly. Local history volumes fill library shelves. They record the origins of communities, document family histories, provide extensive detail about places people have cherished, and support nostalgic attachment to places.
But as we look forward, will the topics and approaches of local history continue to serve new generations?
In recent decades, professional and academic historians have largely ignored local history, no doubt for the reasons that others value it: its reliance on “facts” and finiteness in contrast to looking at broader trends and explanations. In some ways “professional” has been defined in opposition to “local” with its specificity and (often) nostalgia. Those professional historians, including historic preservationists, who rely on local history publications may mine them for particular information but do not necessarily engage with or value them as a genre.
This session addresses what local history might become during the 21st Century and how we can understand it better as a historical genre that has been a popular and durable form to chronicle the past. This roundtable will examine some of the tensions between academic, public, and local histories (and historians) and explore ways that various constituencies including local residents can value meaningful local history narratives.
The goals of the session are to provide insights into local history, highlight areas of local history where public historians can work effectively, and foster more thoughtful products in that genre without professionalizing the approach in an exclusionary manner.
The session organizers, Michelle McClellan and Betsy Bradley, will frame the topic with an overview and pose a series of questions for panelists to address, then open the session to audience discussion.
We are looking for two additional panelists to be part of the roundtable who might want to address these topics or others:
* what is the value of local history to x. y, z constituencies?
* how can the practice of local history be enriched without being transformed beyond recognition?
* what are the risks and benefits of trying to “improve” local history?
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Michelle McClellan, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 1, 2019. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Local history is often overlooked, and I think this is an awesome topic! I have sent you an email in case you are still looking for additional panelists.
An interesting angle to this discussion might be a discussion of local or grass-roots historians documenting local histories through National Register nominations, versus the histories prepared (and proffered) by professional contractors. What we like to call in our office the “mom and pop operations” versus professional firms. What a local community values does not always align with what stories professional historians may value. Sometimes we ourselves experience this disconnect by steering nomination writers in a different direction (especially when discussing national narratives) that doesn’t align with what local history advocates value about their own histories. Not to say that this disconnect and tension is necessarily bad, but it speaks to the frameworks within which professionals operate in.