PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Advocacy
- Memory
- Reflections on the Field
ABSTRACT
The current U.S. presidential administration is determined to usher in a “revolution” in historical thinking and presentation. As a result, both academic and practitioner public historians have faced reduced staffing and funding along with heightened scrutiny from the government and the public. Although divisions exist between field and scholastic public historians, times of crisis highlight our commonalities, giving us the opportunity to bridge gaps and forge a way forward. The experiences of public historians who have long worked with difficult pasts under scrutiny can be instructive for the current climate. This panel hopes to bring public historians from around the field together to explore how looking to the past can inform our future.
DESCRIPTION
As the historical landscape in the U.S. changes on a near-daily basis, public historians are forced to respond to new and ongoing challenges while navigating unprecedented scrutiny from the state and the public. We are witnessing as institutions with federal or state funding are being forced to change signage and interpretive programming to comply with the whims of politicians. Job security and access to the necessary funding to keep public sites open seems to be steadily diminishing.
This is felt acutely by practitioners who engage with controversial history or traditionally marginalized groups within the “official” narrative of the nation’s past. Another sector of public historians dealing with heightened surveillance are those employed within state or federally-funded academic institutions. As money is funneled from the humanities towards STEM it becomes difficult for departments to maintain their program size, let alone actively work on building community partnerships.
The problems faced by practitioners in the field may be different than those in the classroom, but we can identify with one another based on the common pressure from above to make history pleasant and palatable to the American public. Collaborations between public historians at universities and local public history institutions feel the strains of political, public, and financial pressures from their respective stakeholders, while striving to maintain their historical integrity and commitments to their audiences. Rather than choosing sides or placing value-judgements on whose problems are worse, what can we learn from coming together to analyze both sides of the field, past and present?
Public historians know that recording, preserving, and sharing the past with the public is a major responsibility that can be revolutionary at times. With “The Work of Revolution” in mind, this round table hopes to engage academic and practitioner public historians from all professional levels in a discussion about historical precedents and useful approaches to representing difficult or underrepresented pasts under pressure. Public historians who interpret these pasts, whether in a museum exhibit or in a monograph, have likely dealt with the kind of issues the current administration is fostering before. Their insights are worth broader consideration, and ideally, both panelists and audience members will be able to share advice and resources to encourage collaborative public history networks.
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:
Alaina Scapicchio, University of South Florida, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.