Public History: A Textbook of Practice is a guide to the many challenges historians face while teaching, learning, and practicing public history. Historians can play a dynamic and essential role in contributing to public understanding of the past, and those who work in historic preservation, in museums and archives, in government agencies, as consultants, as oral historians, or who manage crowdsourcing projects need very specific skills. This book links theory and practice and provides students and practitioners with the tools to do public history in a wide range of settings. The text engages throughout with key issues such as public participation, digital tools and media, and the internationalization of public history.
Part One focuses on public history sources, and offers an overview of the creation, collection, management, and preservation of public history materials (archives, material culture, oral materials, or digital sources). Chapters cover sites and institutions such as archival repositories and museums, historic buildings and structures, and different practices such as collection management, preservation (archives, objects, sounds, moving images, buildings, sites, and landscape), oral history, and genealogy. Part Two deals with the different ways in which public historians can produce historical narratives through different media (including exhibitions, film, writing, and digital tools). The last part explores the challenges and ethical issues that public historians will encounter when working with different communities and institutions. Either in public history methods courses or as a resource for practicing public historians, this book lays the groundwork for making meaningful connections between historical sources and popular audiences.
Author(s): Thomas Cauvin
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 298
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Historians’ Public Roles and Practices
The Role of Historian: A Short History
Public History: Approaches and Definitions
Institutionalization and Internationalization of Public History
A Textbook of Practice
Part I Collecting, Managing, and Preserving the Past: Public History and Sources
1 Collection Management: Archives, Manuscripts, and Museums
Archives, Manuscripts, and Museum Collections
Introduction to Collection Management
Challenges in Archival Collection Management
The Specific Management of Museum Collections
What Can Public Historians Bring to Collection Management?
2 Historic Preservation
Preserving the Past: Definitions, Purposes, and Debates
Finding and Describing Historical Resources
Evaluation of Sites and Structures: Preliminary Preservation Research
Designing a Nomination for Historic Preservation
Protection and Preservation Technology: Standards, Styles, and Materials
Historic Districts, Revitalization, and Cultural Repair
3 Collecting and Preserving People’s Stories: Oral History, Family History, and Everyday Life
Oral History Practices
Family, Community, and Everyday Life: Sources for Public Historians
People’s History and Personal Experiences: Assets and Challenges for Public Historians
Part II Making Public History: Media and Practice
Interpretation in Public History
History and Fiction
Copyrights, Protection, and Fundraising
4 Public History Writing
Academic, Popular, and Public History Writing Styles
Adopting a Public Style: Writing for Large Non-Specialist Audiences
Fiction and Historical Novels
Children’s Literature, Comics, and Graphic Novels
Digital Public History Writing
5 Editing Historical Texts
Introduction to Documentary Editing: Definition, Purposes, and Debates
Step-by-Step Historical Editing Process
6 Interpreting and Exhibiting the Past
Sites and Purposes of Interpretation
Project Development and Interpretive Planning
Exhibit Design: Space, Objects, and Visitors
Interpretive Texts
Curating Public Space: Art and Public History
7 Radio and Audio-Visual Production
History on Air: Radio and Sound Archives
Film and Documentary: Introduction to History on Screen
Making History on Screen
History on Screen as Public and Participatory History?
8 Digital Public History
The Rise of Digital Practices
Digital Public History and User-Generated Contents
9 Immersive Environments or Making the Past Alive
Immersive Environment and the Recreation of the Past
Performing the Past in Immersive Environments
Re-Enactments
(Video) Games and Immersive Environments
3D Virtual Reconstruction
Part III Collaboration and Uses of the Past
10 Teaching Public History: Creating and Sustaining University Programs
Creating Public History Programs
How to Create an Appropriate Public History Program?
Teaching Theory and Practice
11 Shared Authority: Purposes, Challenges, and Limits
Public History and Shared Authority
Historians and Emotions
Celebrations of the Past: Historians and Pride
The Limits to Shared Authority
12 Civic Engagement and Social Justice: Historians as Activists
From Civic Engagement to Social Justice
Public History as a Source of Social Empowerment for Underrepresented Groups
Public Historians and Everyday Suffering
History for Peace: Human Rights, Apologies, and Reconciliation
13 Historians as Consultants and Advisors: Clients, Courtroom, and Public Policy
Public Historians under Contract
Historians in the Legal Process
Federal and Government Historians, Public Policy, and Policymaking
Index
