Tag Archives: Public History

Final Thoughts on Graduate School

Posted on by
Reply

Do not let the scenic views fool you, grad school is alot of work

On May 4, I graduated with my Master’s degree after two years of hard work. Over the past two years, I have written about the courses I have taken and the books I have read, but in this post, I will try to wrap everything up and offer some advice to those interested attending graduate school in the near future.

One of the first things I learned at James Madison University was that graduate courses are very different from undergraduate courses. Of course, I was told this by all my professors at Missouri Southern State University, but there is really nothing to prepare you for the change. The work is more intensive and the expectations are much higher. The courses are also structured differently as most are seminar style in which a different book is read each week. Grades are handled differently as well. An “A” is still an “A”, but an “A-” might be considered a “B.” A “B” indicates that something was wrong, and anything below a “B” is a failure. In fact, at JMU if you received two “C’s” during the two years, you were placed on academic probation.

Writing is more intense as well. Papers are longer and expected to be more polished. This means that writing a paper the night before is no longer an option. I liked to allow myself several days for proofreading and editing.

With the increased reading and writing, it is important that you be very disciplined and have the ability to make the best use of your time. Most professors will give you a full semester schedule on the syllabus with due dates for all assignments and outline the readings. For me, I liked to keep a copy of each course calendar at my desk and from that I would make a to-do list for the upcoming week. This ensured that I had enough time to go through a book, look up a few reviews, and explore the author’s information. With papers, this gave me plenty of time to research, write, and edit my papers before they were due.

One thing to always include in a schedule is to make time for yourself. Free time is the best stress reliever. Whether you spend the free time at the gym, watching tv or a movie, or going out with friends, it is important you make this time for yourself. Graduate school is hard work and if you devote every waking moment to it, you will burn out quickly. Graduate school is not for everyone. There is a good chance that some of the people you start with will not be around at the end. Do not let that discourage you, however.

Article and Books – the readings for one semester of grad school

Then there is the capstone project….the thesis. Not all majors have this a requirement, but I had to write one. Most students enter graduate school with an idea of what they would like the research and who they want to work with. This will make things much easier moving forward. If possible, try to have a topic picked by the end of your first semester. Talk to your advisors and a possible director to determine the feasibility of your project. That will give you the second semester to begin gathering sources that you will then go through over the summer before your second year. I was lucky at JMU because we had HIST 673 in our second semester, and this allowed us to “test” our thesis topics. Use the summer before your second year to read the secondary literature and begin exploring the primary. Chances are, you will have to write a prospectus shortly after you return in the fall of your second year. In your third semester, you should begin to outline your thesis and put the pieces together. By Christmas break, having at least one chapter done is optimal, but each director has different deadlines and expectations. For example, I had three of my four chapters done before January 1. After you have written all your chapters, you will have a few weeks to edit. Hopefully your director is a punctual as mine was. I always had my chapters back quickly, with comments. The editing phase will be stressful, but you want to submit as complete a thesis as possible to your committee. This will make your final edits much easier. After the text is written, you will then have to put all the parts together along with a title page, table of contents, etc. All of which will be strictly outlined by the Graduate School. After you finish formatting you will feel an immediate release of tension!

As if the the thesis was not enough, there was one last test before I could graduate….the Oral/Comprehensive Exam (JMU’s comprehensive exam was oral, but some schools will have written exams). This consisted of sitting in a room with three professors of my choosing and discussing everything from my thesis to two years of course work and readings. It is certainly difficult to prepare for. Comprehensive exams is why you should take good notes in class and also as you read each book. Most comprehensive exams last about an hour and a half, and they will cover a great deal of information. Some of the information covered depends on who you choose for your committee, however. Some opt to have their comprehensive exam committee to be the same as the thesis committee. I did not go with option because I never had class with them. My thesis director was on my comprehensive exam committee, but the other two members were professors with which I had several courses. This gave them more information to pull from and gave me more to talk about for nearly two hours. The concept of oral exams seems terrifying, but once you are seated in the room, you will get comfortable because you will realize, as long as you studied well, that you know the information well enough.

I almost forgot to mention that while you are juggling courses and writing your thesis, it is very likely you will have an assistantship as well. Teaching assistantships can vary in their degree of difficulty. You may only have to grade and work with students, but some programs require that you also teach discussion sections. This means preparing for two mini-lectures per week. Again, this is all part of the concept of time management. I really enjoyed my TA positons with World History in the fall semesters and working with History Day it the Spring. Whether you have a teaching assistantship or a graduate assistantship, you will have to budget time for that as well.

One of the greatest aspects of graduate school is the people. You will become good friends with a number of the professors, but more important is your cohort. At some schools, the students in your cohort are competitors, but not a JMU. We were encouraged to work together (again, HIST 673 helped with this). It is important to remember that they are going through the same processes that you are, and if you are feeling overwhelmed, and you will, it is very likely they are as well. One of my favorite stress relievers was going out with them and having a drink or two and playing a game of darts. Again, have some fun. Do not let the school work take over your life for two years.

The last two years were full of ups and downs. There were weeks I was overwhelmed with everything, but there was always of the gratification of completing whatever task was causing my stress. Perhaps the most gratifying moment of the last two years was walking across the stage and being hooded at commencement on May 4. I feel that over the past two years I have grown as a historian, but more importantly, I have grown as a person. And I would not trade the experience for anything. 

Reflections on the First Year of Grad School

Posted on by
Reply

After completing my first year of grad school, I thought I would reflect briefly on what has transpired since last August.

The most important thing that I have gained from grad school is a more in depth understanding of the history field itself.  The courses I have taken have broadened my understanding of history and of Public History.  Learning about the historiography of history has been very important.

JMU’s Quad at Twilight

I have gained an even greater respect for the professors I have worked with, not only at JMU, but at Crowder and MSSU as well.  The professors I have worked with at JMU not only teach classes, but direct thesis committees, oral committees and still find time to conduct their own research.  I have also had a little insight in to the world of teaching when I was given the opportunity to prepare a lecture for my TA course last Fall.  I only prepared one 50-minute lecture, but it took over 2 hours to prepare.  Keeping the material fresh and engaging students are not easy tasks and I am glad to have had that experience.

Finally, some advice, grad school is every bit as challenging and involved as everybody said it would be.  There is a massive amount of readings, and not only for courses, but for thesis research as well.  This summer I have a list of approximately 50 books to look over for my thesis research.  My advise for handling this work load is creating checklists.  I create a checklist each Thursday of things I need to have done before the end of the following week.  This allows me to not only see what needs to be done, but also helps me budget my time.  More importantly, however, is giving yourself time for things you enjoy.  I make time to sit and watch the race each Sunday or watch the newest episodes of my favorite TV shows.  It is important to take time for yourself.  If all I did was school work all day, I would have gone crazy last September!

I have found that I have grown as a professional and a person by moving to Virginia and taking on grad school.  I look forward to my second year and what will follow.

Public History Series: Memory

Posted on by
Reply

I could not think of a better post to conclude the Public History series with than one on Memory because it plays into EVERY aspect of the discipline.  The key word in public history is “public.”  We create a link between academic history and the public by making history accessible by everyone.  Memory, in this case, is not a singular term, but a collective term.  The term most often used is “American Memory” and it is very important for public historians to understand.  The knowledge that slavery was bad and immoral is pretty common, and it is a negative memory within the American population, but that does not make it, and other controversial topics, easy to display.

Slavery, and other controversial topics are difficult to deal within a museum.  A museum that chooses to ignore the topic tends to enrage a portion of the population, but those that demonize slaveholders anger yet another part of the population.  Presenting such a controversial topic has been done in many ways.  One way, which causes a great amount of publicity, took place a few years ago at Colonial Williamsburg.  They held a mock slave auction in the town square.  This would have been a common occurrence in the Colonial Era, but was not something the public was interested in in the early Twenty-First Century.  It caused a lot of controversy and they have not attempted to do it again.  Slavery is still discussed within Williamsburg and they even offer a tour that focuses specifically on slavery within a colonial town.

Enola Gay

The other, and more famous, example of a controversial museum display was the Enola Gay.  In 2003, the Enola Gay went on display at the Smithsonian and was presented in such a way that angered those who were against the use of the bomb as well as Japanese-Americans.  The Smithsonian did correct the display, but the results upset veterans whose lives were, arguably, saved by the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II.  The Smithsonian solved the dilemma by taking down the display and leaving the aircraft on display with no interpretation.  The Smithsonian took the easy way out.  The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. is controversial, but they have not close their doors in response to protests.

The key to remember when it comes to memory is that there are two sides to the same story.  The Civil War is a great example of this.  It is nearly impossible to make everyone happy when displaying any controversial topic in history; therefore, it is important to display the history in a way that is truthful and unbiased.  Allow the visitor to draw his/her own conclusions.

Memory is such a great topic to complete the series because it really does play a key role in how we present the history in all the sub-disciplines of Public History: local/regional history, oral history, historic preservation, documentary editing, museum studies, documentary film and visual arts, historical archaeology, and archival work.

It is important to remember that Public Historians are ultimately working to educate the public and should be wary that some events could be painful or offensive to a portion of the population.  This does not mean, however, that it should be brushed over or ignored.  This is, I believe, where public historians differ from academic historians.  Academic historians write for each other, and there are not many within the public that read academic journals or books.  It is important for public historians to use the academic techniques to present history to the public in a way that is accurate and unbiased.  That is the goal of myself and the goal of Public Historians.

-Eric

NOTE:  This is the tenth and final post in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: Historical Archaeology

Posted on by
Reply

Historical archaeology is not a complicated subject.  It is much like regular archaeology except it involves digging at historic sites.  The key with historical archaeology is looking for the artifacts left behind by those who occupied the land.

Historical Archaeology can be pretty technical.  Like typical archaeology, digging is done in squares.  Artifacts are carefully removed and documented as to their proximity to buildings and landscape, but also their depth in the ground.  The depth is specifically important because it is possible to use that depth to determine its age.  Stratigraphy is a branch of geology used to determine the age of layers within the soil.

The artifacts found can also help in understanding who was there and when.  One of the most common and widely studied artifacts are pipe stems.  It sound strange, but pipe stems can help date a site to within a few years.  This then brings in another key term: terminus post quem.   This Latin term roughly translate to “the date after which.”  It essentially means that nothing found in a specific layer can be older than the oldest artifact.  While this all sounds complicated, it is rather simple.  If you find three artifacts and Artifact 1 is from 1850, Artifact 2 is from 1870, and Artifacts 3 is from 1905, then we know the site cannot be older than 1850.  This is true for more than historical archaeology.  This is also true when determining the age of a house by looking at the specific building materials and construction techniques.

Archaeology at Montpelier

Historical archaeology is important because it uncovers artifacts of everyday life as well as bones of animals.  Extensive studies have been done on plantations in the South, and James Deetz found, in his book In Small Things Forgotten, that slaves ate different types of meats.  This has been determined by studying the remains of animals near slave cabins.

Historical archaeology is ongoing at many sites within the United States.  One project that I am familiar with takes place at Montpelier.  They are excavating in search for items from the Madison era.  Things have been discovered include: remnants of slave cabins, kitchens, and artifacts once owned by the slaves on the property.  The work is ongoing as the property at Montpelier is quite large.

There is a need for students to work on these projects.  Montpelier has a summer internship program that allows college age students to assist with the archaeological projects.  While not all of them are public historians, several are.  It is a great opportunity to do field work and not spend all the time in an archive or museum.  It is one of the most exciting sub-disciplines within public history.

-Eric

NOTE:  This is the eighth in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: Documentary Film

Posted on by
Reply

While museums are a very common way for the public to experience history in the field, they experience history in their living rooms by watching historical documentaries.  These are often produced in cooperation with historians and public historians to ensure their accuracy.  There is, however, a very special technique required to take history from a book and put it on PBS or the History Channel.

Historical documentaries can come in two forms.  The first is the traditional “Based on Historical Events” film.  These films are a nightmare for historians because while historical sources are used in the production of the film, there is a creative twist to it that detracts from its accuracy.  In a film about George Washington, for example, he may be depicted talking with the members of his Cabinet.  We have an idea what was discussed, but we do not know the full dialogue, so that is filled in.  Other issues, architecture, costuming, etc. all add up.  If done correctly, everything would be period, but that is not always the case.  This is a popular form of documentary and they are effective at engaging the public.  They encourage a small portion of the audience to do further research, but the majority take the documentary film as fact.

The other type of documentary is the kind you are used to seeing on the History Channel or PBS.  That is the story of an event being told using actual images or videos from the event with historians commentating.  Perhaps one of the most famous filmmakers of this type is Ken Burns.  His series on the Civil War changed the way people thought about documentaries.  He used the right mix of reenactment, interpretation, and historical images to bring the Civil War to life.  That is not to say that every historian loves Burns’s work, in fact, a lot of historians hate him.  However, he does make entertaining films, and does it without sacrificing integrity.

So the next time you are watching a documentary on PBS or the History Channel, pay close attention to how well it is at telling a story and whether or not they are allowing the history to tell itself.  Also, watch the credits and notice how many historians worked on the project.  The History Channel and PBS have historians on staff to review the films before they are aired, but each project will have its own historians involved.  Be aware, all documentaries have some form of bias and that is usually easy to detect.  Once the viewer looks past the bias, there is an important story being told and it is up to historians and public historians to ensure the stories are told accurately.

NOTE:  This is the seventh in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: Museum Studies

Posted on by
Reply

Many Public Historians choose to work where the public is most likely to encounter history, museums or historic sites (I will use the general term “museum” through out the post, but the same is true for historic sites).  There are a wide variety of positions available in museums from curator to interpreter.  There are also several types of museums from private to those within the National Park Service.  No matter which museum you choose, you present history to a large audience.

The different positions available within a museum is numerous.  Aside from administrative positions, historians often occupy many of the major positions.  At the top is usually  curator and an advanced degree in history usually required.  The curator oversees all tasks within the museum, but most of the front-line work is done by other staff members.  Behind the scenes there are archivists at most museums.  A typical museum has a large collection of artifacts, and it is not possible to display them all at once.  The archivists job is to keep inventory of the museums collection.  There are also collection specialists that work on this as well.  Many museums will also employ preservationists/conservators to ensure the documents and artifacts are properly preserved.

One the front lines within the museum there are those who design the exhibits.  Exhibit designers usually are not employed by a museum, but they are hired by the museum from outside firms.  Smaller museums may have their staff design the exhibits, but this is often done by a group of professionals.  The most important members of a museum are the interpreters.  Most often they serve as a guide for visitors through the museum.  What the visitor remembers will most likely be what they are told by the interpreter.  There are many different kinds of interpreters.  The Park Service uses rangers and many small museums use volunteers to guide visitors.  The museums that get the most attention, however, are the ones that use interpreters and re-enactors.  A great example of this is Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.  All the interpreters are in period costume and work to create a living city environment for the visitors.  Williamsburg is not the traditional museum, but it is very effective.

The city street of Colonial Williamsburg

The different types of museums are also important to take into consideration.  Private museums are more common than public museums, but both do well at interpreting history.  The main difference between the two is funding.  Private museums are often funded through donations and that can cause issues with what is displayed in the museum.  As I discussed in the post about Local/Regional History, a local museum relies heavily on donations and if a prominent family gives a substantial amount, they may want their family’s history displayed in the museum or not displayed depending on the family’s past.  Public museums, like the Park Service, do not rely as heavily on donations, but they still have to be concerned about offending the public.

All museums have to be concerned about how they present history.  It is nearly impossible to display artifacts from an event without angering a portion of the population.  This is especially true when displaying artifacts from controversial historical events such as slavery, the Holocaust, or the use of atomic weapons on Japan.  These topics are difficult to begin with, but displaying them in a way that does not offend is nearly impossible.  I will discuss this more in a later post about memory.

Museums are the most important and most common way that the public comes into contact with history.  That is why it is important that the displays be accurate and tell a clear story.  Even if the topic is difficult for the public to deal with, it still needs to be told.  Public Historians often work in museums and many work for the National Park Service.  While in school, museums are a great place to intern and get a feel for life in a museum.  The Park Service has excellent internship opportunities and I interned for them last year.  Museums are important because they tell the story in a way a book cannot.  Bringing the pubic into contact with the artifacts is key to allowing them to understand history.

NOTE:  This is the sixth in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: Oral History

Posted on by
Reply

Oral history is one of the more difficult projects to undertake because it involves you and another person.  Oral interviews can be difficult depending on the person being interviewed and the person conducting the interview.  There are some keys to conducting the interview, and, as with anything, there are some drawbacks to this type of history.

Conducting an oral interview is the focus of oral history.  The first thing to consider when taking on an oral history project is where the interview will take place.  It should be a comfortable place for the interviewee and also a place where there will be few distractions.  The other thing to consider is how will the interview be recorded.  This can be done using a sound recording or a video recording device.  Either way, it is important to understand that the interviewee will often be nervous about being recorded and it may take them a few minutes to warm up to the recorder.  It is important for the interviewer to begin and not draw attention to the recording device.  It is wise to run a few practice interviews with the person.  In a perfect world, the interviewee would be interviewed two or three times to be sure all the information has been gathered, but time does not always allow for that.

The goal of the interview is to find out specific information about that person’s life.  Therefore, the interviewer must prepare a series of questions to direct the conversation, but it is important to let the interviewee tell the story.  There is nothing more annoying than the interviewer cutting the interviewee off mid-sentence and asking a new question.  LET THEM TALK.  The questions prepared must be open ended questions and not require only a simple Yes/No answer.  The best way to begin the interview is by asking simple questions.  What is your name?  Where were you born?  When were you born?  Who were your parents?  What did your parents do for a living?  These questions serve two purposes.  First, yhey give background information, but they also serve as a ice-breakers and will take their mind off the recording device.  Throughout the interview, the interviewer should only speak to direct conversation and at times it may be necessary to get the interviewee back on topic, but the interviewer should not be features prominently.  The interview should only last about an hour.  Anything more than that and the interviewee begins to fatigue and it shows in the interview.  If more time is needed, simply go back later to complete the interview.

After the interview is complete, the next step is to transcribe it.  Many oral history collections will require a transcription of the recording to go along with it.  This is the most time consuming part of the process and can take several hours.  At this point, many decisions must be made.  Do you correct incorrect grammar?  Do you remove the countless “uhs” and “ums”?  The simple answer is no.  You should try to be as true to the interviewee as possible in the transcript.  Not everyone who accesses the interview will have time to listen to or watch the recording of the interview.  The transcript must stay as authentic as possible.

Oral histories serve a great purpose by adding a more individualized aspect to history, but they do not come without their drawbacks.  The interviewee is often drawing from memory and recalling events that may have taken place over fifty years ago, and the events may not be as clear.  There may be gaps in the story or the interviewee may change the story to improve their image.  Oral histories are important and there are some large projects being undertaken to collect them.  One of the largest is the Veterans History Project by the Library of Congress.  They are collecting the stories of veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War for their archives.  While it is not always a public historian conducting a oral history, it often is.  A wide variety of historians use oral histories in their work because they add a personal touch to it, and there are many important stories that need to be recording for future generations.

-Eric

NOTE:  This is the third in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: Local/Regional History

Posted on by
Reply

Most cities or counties have a museum dedicated to its history.  This is a place to collect and display the historical items from a particular region’s past.  There are many examples of this type of museum across America.  They present an interesting story, but sometimes these stories are part truth and part myth.  Local history is often used to encourage tourism for a city and that is why some of the more exciting stories are told.

Local museums are often run by a group of volunteers or history buffs that have lived in the region for the majority, if not all, their lives.  These museums rely on donations from the community in order to exist and this creates problems.  When a prominent family donates a large amount of money to form a local museum, they are often doing so with the expectation that their family’s history will be told somewhere in the museum.  I have been to many museums where one room is dedicated to a particular family, but they did not necessary have anything to do with the city’s history.  There are exceptions to that, however.  The Harrison family in the Shenandoah Valley donated the land which makes up Harrisonburg today; therefore, his story is featured in the history of Harrisonburg, but it has been included with the context of city.  Unlike other museums (I will not mention names) I have been to where there is a room dedicated to the furniture owned by Family X, even though they really had nothing to do with the city.

Newton County Museum in Neosho, Missouri

Another part of local history is the publication of books.  I am sure you have seen books on the history of Neosho or Harrisonburg at the local stores.  These books are often written by local history buffs, and they tell the story of the city but do not quite piece together the full context of the city or region.  I own several books on local history and they all do some things well, but ignore other aspects of the history of a town.  Local historians do this on purpose.  Books and museums are a way to educate the public about their city, but they tend to leave out the more controversial parts of history because, in many cases, the families involved in the events are still living in the area and no one wants to offend their neighbors.  This also brings us back to the donation issue.  The family that gives to the museum may have a role in the city’s history, but it may not be a positive role and therefore that is ignored due to their generous donation.

The final issue with local museums is context.  Those running local museums are often well versed in local history, but not so much in national or state history.  This can be important because events taking place in the city at a particular point in time may not have been unique to that city.  It could have been a state wide issue or even a national trend.  Context is important because relating a major national or state event to something that happened in the city allows the visitor to make connections.  A city is most likely not isolated from these events and will reflect some aspects of it.

All the negatives aside, local museums are important to the historical community because they are repositories for local history.  People tend to donate old pictures and items to the museum because they no longer want them cluttering their house.  These items may not always make it into the museum exhibit, but they build a great archive.  Another role local museums often plays involves genealogy.  Many times they will collect the genealogy records for the city or county and make them accessible to the public and that helps a wide variety of historians and the local public.

Local history is not without it faults, but it is one of the most common forms of history in America.  Many Public Historians find themselves at local museums after they complete their degree.  They try to present a complete history of a region, but often upset many members of the community in the process.  As historians we want to tell the whole story, the good and the bad, but local historians need to have the tact to brush over the negatives that effect members of the community.

-Eric

NOTE:  This is the second in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

Public History Series: What is Public History?

Posted on by
Reply

I have been asked this question many times and it really annoys me when people assume it is just the “study of old barns.”  In fact, there are many facets to Public History that are used by historians of all interests.  Over the next nine weeks I am going to break down Public History into its many subcategories and explain how everything works.

Before I get to the subcategories, this post is merely a brief look at Public History and is meant to introduce the readers to the two main organizations that exist to assist Public Historians,  the National Council of Public History and the Public History Resource Center.  These two organizations make up the bulk of the Public History information available to those interested in the field.  Their websites provide information about educational opportunities as well as employment opportunities.  The most important thing is the make the discipline and its resources availabe to those interesting in pursuing a degree, and eventually a career, in the field of Public History.

The National Council of Public History is a professional organization much like the American Historical Association.  Members of the organization pay dues and receive updates, discounted rates at the NCPH Annual Conference, and the journal The Public Historian.  Like most professional scholarly organizations, the NCPH is a way for those in the profession to share their work and ideas with each other.

The Public History Resource Center has a very different purpose, however.  They primarily provide up-to-date information on degree programs for Public History as well as employment opportunities.  This site is a must visit for anyone interested in pursuing a degree in Public History or those seeking employment in the field.  They also provide reviews of history websites which provide information and documents for research.  These reviews are not only intended for Public Historians as they cover a wide variety of topics.

So what is Public History?  The National Council of Public History defines Public History as a discipline in which “historians and their various publics collaborate in trying to make the past useful to the public.”  This can be done in a wide variety of ways.  Museums are the most common form of Public History in practice, but there are others including local/regional history, oral history, historic preservation, documentary editing, museum studies, documentary film and visual arts, historical archaeology, archival work, and memory.  I am going to spend the next several weeks covering all nine of these topics in more detail.  I hope this series of posts will serve as a guide for anyone interested in the field. Until then…

-Eric

NOTE:  This is the first in a ten part series on Public History.  The posts from the series will be presented on Wednesdays and Saturdays from now until April 6.  A wide variety of aspects will be covered and I will try to present an unbiased account of the positive and negative aspects of each subcategory of Public History.

COURSES: HIST 696: Introduction of Public History

Posted on by
Reply

My second course with Dr. Lanier is Intro to Public History.  The course has a similar structure to Material Culture from last semester with the some of the same content, but there is one major difference.  Since there are so many of us in the Public History gradate program, the undergrads have been separated from the grad students.  This is great because there are only nine students in the class and we are all grad students.  And since we know each other, it makes the class much more fun!

There is a good amount of reading for the course, however.  Each week, one of us has to present on a book we have read.  I do not present my book until March, but it is a great exercise. This guarantees that we are exposed to more books than just those assigned for the class.  Speaking of the assigned books, there is quite a list of them including:

On Doing Local History, New History in an Old Museum, The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums, Public History: Essays from the Field, and Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory

JMU Students working in the Field

There is a fair bit of writing involved as well.  We have to write three short papers (5 pages each) throughout the semester.  The first paper is related to the use of Sanborn Maps.  Sanborn maps will be the subject of a separate blog post, but they are, in essence, fire insurance maps.  These maps are extremely detailed and map ever structure in town and color code them based on their building material, roof type, etc.  These maps are very important for a public historian.  The second paper is an Oral History paper in which we have to interview someone and write about their experiences.  I do have some experience with oral interviews, so this should not be too difficult.  The third short paper is an Exhibit Review.  I did this last semester for Material Culture, but it is essentially a review of a museum exhibit where I will explore the exhibit’s layout, content, and purpose.

Like Material Culture, we also have a final paper which must be approximately 15 pages and can be  a in depth look at a particular subfield of Public History or one of many projects.

We meet twice a week and discuss various subfields of Public History including: local/regional history, oral history, historic preservation, documentary editing and publishing, living history museums, historical interpretation, museums, visual culture, archaeology, archives, and memory.  In addition to discussing these subfields we will have various guest speakers ranging from publishers to archaeologists.  Dr. Lanier has also given us a few possibilities for field trips once the weather is nicer.

As a Public History, this class is making me more excited about my subject.  In fact, looking ahead for the next several weeks, this course could very well be my favorite of the semester, although, it will have a tough time beating Historic Preservation.  Public History is a very diverse field and there are many opportunities for historians within it.

Next week, I will look at HIST 673 Historic Writing Seminar!  Until then…

-Eric