National Council on Public History

PROPOSAL TYPE

Traditional Panel

SEEKING

• Seeking General Feedback and Interest

RELATED TOPICS

• Archives
• Memory
• Place

ABSTRACT

This panel presents three projects that center marginal places to engage audiences in discussing current societal tensions, divisions, and contested visions of the past. We are interested in two interconnected questions. First, how can we tell the histories of marginal places to turn the narratives of struggle, oppression, and decline into stories with the potential to foster a sense of place-based solidarity? Second, how can we interpret places to move away from the ever-increasing polarization toward a narrative of interconnectedness?

DESCRIPTION

As first-time applicants to a NCPH conference, we are looking for general feedback. Our goal is to share our experiences and hear feedback, especially from colleagues who – like us – work in places where the current political atmosphere puts a lot of pressure on educators and other public history practitioners.

Andrew Amstutz will discuss his work on the Files Cemetery in Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of the few cemeteries in the United States that is dedicated to those who died during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Working with Ruth Coker Burks, who in the 1980s cared for men dying of AIDS, Amstutz has participated in the efforts to transfer Coker Burks’ records to a local archive and preserve the Files Cemetery as a site of LGBTQ+ memory and history in the southern United States. He will examine the contested history of the Files Cemetery and consider the opportunities and challenges that centering a site of queer/LGBTQ history in the history of Arkansas and in a mainstream archival institution poses.

Marta Cieslak will discuss how international collaborations may help us address contested historical debates by providing a global context for local place-based histories. Focusing on the project “Slavery and Freedom: Journeys Across Time and Space,” Cieslak will examine how the initiative brought together two local stories – one from the Island of Reunion, France, and one from Arkansas, USA – to shed light on the global history of race and racial slavery. The resulting exhibit serves as an example of the globalization of local histories to engage audiences in a meaningful exploration of the history of a place they feel personally connected to and its relationship with the larger world. The presentation will also reflect on the challenges of international collaborations.

David Baylis will discuss his work on service-providing lingering yet threatened “third places” (i.e., old-fashioned barbershops, working-class gyms, bars, tattoo parlors) as places that both forge and combat the culture of conspiracy theories that he argues, is tied to the 1970s changes in the labor movement and the rise of the overall sense of working-class despair. Baylis will focus on how this research has propelled him to develop new pedagogical approaches that involve students in producing public-facing projects. He will explore whether place-based storytelling that may ask us to engage with views that run counter to our own has the potential to defy polarization and produce a dialogue.

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: Marta Cieslak, [email protected]

ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 10, 2024. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion