PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Public Engagement
- Reflections on the Field
- Theory in Practice
ABSTRACT
A conversation (either a roundtable or maybe a working group or possible a weirder format in which we look examples together and discuss them?) about popular history: podcasts, TikTok feeds, YouTube explainers, self-published books, etc.: who is doing it? (I’m particularly interested in people who are not trained historians or affiliated with history orgs) what does it look like? and what does it mean for public history practitioners and organizations.
DESCRIPTION
For full disclosure, I’m currently working on a book about this topic, so I’ve spent the last year or so thinking through popular historical content that is made by people who are not professional historians–by this, I mean stuff like buckle-up threads, instagram accounts, podcasts, GraveTok, etc. etc. and I really want to talk about it!
I think that the profession isn’t yet grappling with what it means that many people are getting their history from these sources, and would love to see what other people think and what kinds of questions/observations they might have! So, I am looking for folks who might be interested in this conversation, whether they’re practitioners, scholars, or content creators themselves. As you can seem, this is all still very rough–my assumption is that we would figure out the parameters of the conversation together!
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:
M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, American University, [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.
Hi MJ, I loovvvveeee this! I am none of the things you mention here, of course, but I do work on the marketing team at a history org, and I think another thing to add to your list is collaborations between history organizations/museums and paid influencers who are bringing their content to broad audiences and also YouTube historians, like this one who makes video tours of New England house museums: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidDillon101—his video on Beauport, which Historic New England (my employer) owns has almost 6,000 views, versus a few hundred on Beauport content on our YouTube channel (there are a ton of there examples of this, too), and, like, they are extremely boring with terrible production values yet people seem to want to watch them over “official” content?
Also, not sure if you saw Heather Cole’s proposal for a roundtable on self-publishing, but there may be generative overlap there?
Apologies for my typos and punctuation errors, I wrote this on my phone!
I would love to see this session happen and I’d love for historians to rally around some of these sources (we know not all of them are credible but people flock to them anyway) and support them as we work harder to inform the public about historical events, history and why things matter right now. We have to be flexible with how people are coming to history and do a little meeting them where they are–and that might mean partnering with these creators to help them pass along credible information while embracing the change that social media has brought to our work. This is great and I hope that you are able to find some collaborators. I’d talk with History Made By US. The team has that history background but they aren’t overly scholarly and the approach is amazing.