Advanced Public History

Catalog description

Public historians build essential bridges between ordinary citizens and the knowledge and understanding of the past required by any self-governing society. Knowing how time has acted upon a society, how things came to be the way they are, helps individuals and groups move toward where they want that society to go, what they want it to become. This class will lay the groundwork for what is expected of public historians in the many professional settings available to them, which include museums, art galleries, national parks, historical societies, non-profit organizations, park and recreation commissions, historic homes, battlefields, foundations, corporations, government departments, preservation organizations, archives, libraries, living history organizations, tourism councils, convention and visitors' bureaus, and universities. This course allows students to experience of some of these roles and places, and more importantly, to develop a lived sense of how they all can fit together in an individual career. The course does this partly in the classroom and partly through direct engagement with doing public history, well-supported by faculty and classmates. The course invites students to meet public historians and to participate in the public history process - mobilizing accurate history to stimulate emotions that then produce citizen engagement. The heart of public history practice involves sharing authority with audiences and confronting the line between entertainment and education. The first several weeks of the course introduce students to specific elements of practice and examples of public history, followed by an extended public history work project that can be actual and/or virtual. After the completion of the project, students gather to reflect on their practice and develop a deeper theoretical understanding of what they have come to know. Together, the three sections of the course create the capacity, and the motivation, to become active public historians either as professionals or as participants in the communities students will encounter in their own lives.