Definition
Because it incorporates a wide range of practices and takes place in many different settings, public history proves resistant to being precisely defined. Several key elements often emerge from the discourse of those who identify themselves as public historians:
- A focus on history for the general public, rather than academics or specialists.
- The use of historical methods.
- An emphasis on professional standards, training, and practice.
- An emphasis on the usefulness of historical knowledge in some way that goes beyond purely academic or antiquarian purposes.
- An aim to deepen and empower the public's connection with and knowledge of the past.
These elements are expressed in the 1989 mission statement of the U.S.-based National Council on Public History: "To promote the utility of history in society through professional practice." [1] They are also present in a definition drafted by the NCPH board in 2007, stating, "Public history is a movement, methodology, and approach that promotes the collaborative study and practice of history; its practitioners embrace a mission to make their special insights accessible and useful to the public." However, this draft definition prompted some challenges on the H-Public listserv from people in the field, [2] who raised questions about whether public history is solely an endeavor by professional or trained historians, or if shared historical authority should be a key element of the field. Others have pointed out that the existence of many "publics" for public history complicates the task of definition. For example, historian Peter Novick has questioned whether much of what is termed public history should actually be called private history (for example, the creation of corporate histories or archives) or popular history (for example, research or exhibits conducted outside the norms of the historical discipline). [3] Cathy Stanton has also identified a more radical element in North American public history but has asked: 'how much room is there for the progressive component in the public history movement?' [4] Hilda Kean and Paul Ashton have also discussed the differences in public history in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., arguing against 'a rigid demarcation between "historians" and "their publics"'. [5] A 2008 survey of almost 4,000 practitioners predominantly in the U.S. showed that a substantial proportion (almost one quarter of respondents) expressed some reservations about the term and whether it applied to their own work. [6]
In general, those who embrace the term public historian accept that the boundaries of the field are flexible. The juxtapositions between public and academic history cannot be ignored, causing complications in defining who is capable of altering what we define as generally accepted history. John Tosh, a historian who has researched public history, discusses how some of the most productive discussions come from oral history, consisting of people being interviewed about their memory. [7] Its definition remains a work in progress, subject to continual re-evaluation of practitioners' relationships with different audiences, goals, and political, economic, or cultural settings. For example, historian Guy Beiner has criticized the prevalent conception of public history for not adequately taking on board “the countless intimate spheres in which history is retold surreptitiously” and concluded that “the complex relationships between private and public forms of history await to be teased out”. [8]
History
Public history has many antecedents. These include history museums, historical societies, public and private archives and collections, hereditary and memorial associations, preservation organizations, historical and heritage projects and offices within government agencies, and depictions of history in popular culture of all kinds (for example, historical fiction). Ludmilla Jordanova has also observed that 'the state... lies at the heart of public history', linking public history to the rise of the nation state. [10] (English theologian William Paley declared in 1794 that 'public history' was a 'register of the successes and disappointments... and the quarrels of those who engage in contentions [for] power'.) [11] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a distinct historical discipline formed within Western universities, and this had the effect of gradually separating scholars who practiced history professionally from amateur or public practitioners. [12] While there continued to be trained historians working in public settings, there was a general retreat from public engagement among professional historians by the middle decades of the twentieth century. [13]
During the 1970s, a number of political, economic, social, and historiographical developments worked to reverse this trend, converging to produce a new field that explicitly identified itself as “public history”. The social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s had sparked an interest in the histories of non-dominant people and groups—for example, women, working-class people, ethnic and racial minorities—rather than the “great men” who had traditionally been the focus of many historical narratives. In Britain, this emerged through the History Workshop Movement. Many historians embraced social history as a subject, and some were eager to become involved in public projects as a way of using their scholarship in activist or public-oriented ways. [14] In the U.S., a severe shortage of academic jobs for historians led many to consider careers outside the academy. [15] At the same time, publicly funded efforts were underway in many Western countries, ranging from national celebrations like the United States Bicentennial to multiculturalist projects in Australia and Canada, paralleled by widespread public interest in genealogy, the tracing of folk and family “roots”, and other history-related activities. In the wake of deindustrialization in many industrial places, governments also supported regeneration or revitalization projects that increasingly included the use of local history and culture as an attraction or a basis for “re-branding” a depressed area. [16] Out of necessity, inclination, or both, a growing number of people with graduate training in history found employment in these kinds of non-academic settings. Public policy decisions like the passage of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the Canadian government's addition of “historical researcher” as a civil service category in the 1970s, [17] along with the rise of cultural tourism and the increasing professionalization of many museums and historical societies, have spurred the growth of the field.
In the U.S., the birth of the public history field can be traced to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Robert Kelley, a member of the history faculty, obtained a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1976 to create a graduate program to train young historians for public and private sector careers. [18] Kelley drew on his own extensive experience as a consultant and legal witness in water litigation cases in conceiving the idea of “public history” as a field in its own right. Conferences in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978 and Montecito, California in 1979 helped to catalyze the new field. The launch of a professional journal, The Public Historian , in 1978, and the founding of the National Council on Public History in 1979 further served to give public-minded historians in the academy and isolated practitioners outside of it a sense that they shared a set of missions, experiences, and methods.
Public history in Canada has followed a similar trajectory in many ways, including the experience of an academic “jobs crisis” in the 1970s and the importance of government as a source of employment for public historians. [19] In 1983, the University of Waterloo created a Masters program in Public History (now defunct), followed by The University of Western Ontario in 1986, and Carleton University in 2002. Also as in the U.S., Canadian public funding for history and heritage projects has shrunk in the past two decades, with public historians increasingly accountable to funders for the effectiveness of their work. [20]
Public history also exists as an identifiable field in Australia [21] and to a lesser extent in Europe [22] [23] and other places. In Latin America, public history finds its highest expression in Brazil, where public history is closely connected with social history and oral history. The Brazilian Public History Network, created in 2012, has been responsible for promoting publications and sponsoring events of national and international scope aimed to foster a creative and cosmopolitan dialogue. [24] As in the U.S. and Canada, there are many public projects involving historians and the interpretation of history that do not necessarily claim the specific label “public history.”
The International Federation for Public History (IFPH-FIHP) [25] was formed in 2010 and became an international association with elected Steering Committee in January 2012. [26] IFPH is also a permanent [27] Internal Commission of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS-CISH). The IFPH seeks to broaden international exchanges about the practice and teaching of public history and it is one of the constitutive co-operation partners of the journal Public History Weekly . From 2018 IFPH has published its own journal International Public History edited by Andreas Etges (LMU, Munich) and David Dean (Carleton University, Ottawa).
Public history continues to develop and define itself. There are currently many graduate and undergraduate public history programs in the U.S., Canada, and other countries (see list and links below). The field has a natural synergy with digital history, with its emphasis on access and broad participation in the creation of historical knowledge. In recent years there has been a growing body of public historical scholarship, including works recognized by the annual National Council on Public History Book Award. [28] In several countries, studies have been conducted to explore how people understand and engage with the past, deepening public historians’ sense of how their own work can best connect with their audiences. [29] While high-profile “history wars” have taken place over public exhibits and interpretations of history in many places in recent years (for example, Australia's ongoing debate over the history of colonisation and indigenous peoples, the furor over Jack Granatstein's 1998 book Who Killed Canadian History? , or the 1994 controversy over the National Air and Space Museum's planned exhibit on the Enola Gay bomber), public historians tend to welcome these as opportunities to participate in vigorous public discussions over the meanings of the past, debating how people arrive at those meanings.
An evolving form of locally collected and publicly presented history, seen in projects like If This House Could Talk and the Humanities Truck are a less critical and validated public presentation of history, yet offer engagement at the grass roots level that may encourage new forms of collecting history about the everyday. [30]
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. Some historians are recognized by publications or training and experience. "Historian" became a professional occupation in the late nineteenth century as research universities were emerging in Germany and elsewhere.
Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus. Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology, so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist.
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries. Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form.
In the broadest sense, cultural resource management (CRM) is the vocation and practice of managing heritage assets, and other cultural resources such as contemporary art. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture. It also delves into the material culture of archaeology. Cultural resource management encompasses current culture, including progressive and innovative culture, such as urban culture, rather than simply preserving and presenting traditional forms of culture.
Political history is the narrative and survey of political events, ideas, movements, organs of government, voters, parties and leaders. It is closely related to other fields of history, including diplomatic history, constitutional history, social history, people's history, and public history. Political history studies the organization and operation of power in large societies.
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. In the two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history departments of British and Irish universities in 2014, of the 3410 faculty members reporting, 878 (26%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 841 (25%).
The Doctor of Education is a research or professional doctoral degree that focuses on the field of education. It prepares the holder for academic, research, administrative, clinical, or professional positions in educational, civil, private organizations, or public institutions. Considerable differences exist in structure, content and aims between regions. In the US, for instance, the EdD usually is a professional doctorate for working or learning professionals and has a large taught component with a smaller thesis, comparable to for example a DSW or DPH, whereas in the UK and Canada, the Ed.D is a full research doctorate with research and profession related courses but ultimately awarded for the thesis resulting from original research, that way aligning more with a Ph.D.
Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in different cultures. Communication is commonly defined as giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to express emotions effectively. Communication studies is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge that encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face conversation at a level of individual agency and interaction to social and cultural communication systems at a macro level.
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional standards, and support scholarship and innovative teaching. It publishes The American Historical Review four times annually, which features scholarly history-related articles and book reviews.
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture. Although sometimes wrongly conflated with ethnographic film, visual anthropology encompasses much more, including the anthropological study of all visual representations such as dance and other kinds of performance, museums and archiving, all visual arts, and the production and reception of mass media. Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of visual anthropology: research topics include sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics, paintings and photographs. Also within the province of the subfield are studies of human vision, properties of media, the relationship of visual form and function, and applied, collaborative uses of visual representations.
A terminal degree is the highest-level college degree that can be achieved and awarded in an academic discipline or professional field. In other cases, it is a degree that is awarded because a doctoral-level degree is not available nor appropriate.
History is the systematic study and documentation of the human past.
An architectural historian is a person who studies and writes about the history of architecture, and is regarded as an authority on it.
Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context, often concentrating on a relatively small local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small but a study of past events in a given geographical area which is based on a wide variety of documentary evidence and placed in a comparative context that is both regional and national. Historic plaques are one form of documentation of significant occurrences in the past and oral histories are another.
Indigenous archaeology is a sub-discipline of Western archaeological theory that seeks to engage and empower indigenous people in the preservation of their heritage and to correct perceived inequalities in modern archaeology. It also attempts to incorporate non-material elements of cultures, like oral traditions, into the wider historical narrative. This methodology came out of the global anti-colonial movements of the 1970s and 1980s led by aboriginal and indigenous people in settler-colonial nations, like the United States, Canada, and Australia. Major issues the sub-discipline attempts to address include the repatriation of indigenous remains to their respective peoples, the perceived biases that western archaeology's imperialistic roots have imparted into its modern practices, and the stewardship and preservation of indigenous people's cultures and heritage sites. This has encouraged the development of more collaborative relationships between archaeologists and indigenous people and has increased the involvement of indigenous people in archaeology and its related policies.
The National Council on Public History (NCPH) is an American professional membership association established in 1979 to support a diverse group of people, institutions, agencies, businesses, and academic programs associated with the field of public history.
Various aspects of communication have been the subject of study since ancient times, and the approach eventually developed into the academic discipline known today as communication studies.
The historiography of Canada deals with the manner in which historians have depicted, analyzed, and debated the history of Canada. It also covers the popular memory of critical historical events, ideas and leaders, as well as the depiction of those events in museums, monuments, reenactments, pageants and historic sites.
Philip Louis Cantelon is the co-founder and CEO of History Associates Incorporated and a leading pioneer in the field of applied history. He previously taught contemporary American history at Williams College, and is a founding member of the National Council on Public History and the Society for History in the Federal Government. Cantelon is an expert on oral history, foundations, business and institutional history, as well as the history of deregulation.
Marla Miller is an American public historian.
