Public History

A Practical Guide

Faye Sayer

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350051324
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Enseñanza de historia

The 2nd edition of Public History: A Practical Guide provides a fresh examination of history as practiced in its various worldly guises and contexts. It analyses the many skills that historians require in the practice of public history and looks at how a range of actors, including museums, archives, government agencies, community history societies and the media/digital media, make history accessible to a wider audience in a variety of ways. Faye Sayer's exciting new edition includes: * Brand new chapters on 'Restoration and Preservation' and history and the working world
* Substantial additions covering the growing fields of digital history and history in politics
* More images, figures and international case studies from the US, Australia, the UK, Europe and Asia
* 'Personal Reflection' sections from a range of industry experts from around the world
* Historiographical updates and significant revisions throughout the text
* Expanded online 'Public History Toolkit' resource, with a range of new features Public History: A Practical Guide delivers a comprehensive outline of this increasingly prevalent area of the discipline, offering a distinctly global approach that is both accessible and engaging in equal measure. Finally, it explores future methodological possibilities and can be used as a reference point for professional development planning in the sectors discussed. This is the essential overview for any student wanting to know what history means beyond the classroom.

1

History beyond the Classroom

The pursuit of public history has become essential to the practice of history. Public history has developed from a separate entity, a sub-discipline, outside of the mainstream of the academic discipline of history, into an integrated and essential element of the subject’s research and communication. Consequently, it is now expected that historians employed in both private and public historical institutes understand, embrace and integrate elements of public history into all components of their work. The introduction of public history into wider historical practice has broadened the impact that history has on the wider world and, conversely, the impact the wider world has on history. The practice of public history and its diverse methods have influenced how historians approach historical research and how, and to whom, it is communicated. As such, developing knowledge of public history and understanding its methods and its application in practice are now an essential component in graduate and undergraduate history syllabi around the world.

This book explores what public history is, how it has developed and the mechanisms it uses for its application in practice. It aims to help the reader consider key questions about the nature of public history and its methodological and practical differences from the academic discipline of history; it has raised issues of interpretation, audience response, and the use and exploitation of history in the ‘real world’. It examines the variety of methods and skills that historians use and require to practise history in the public domain. It discusses how, through various modes of interpretation and presentation, a range of institutions, including museums, archives, government agencies, community history, societies and the media, make history accessible to the wider ‘public’ audience. It provides the reader with an overview of the wider world application and communication of history beyond the classroom through core case studies that include ideas for best practice ‘in the field’ and detail the interplay between public history and public archaeology. This book offers a synopsis of the topic in a way that has not previously been covered in an accessible and engaging format. Public history is a specialist topic that has changed substantially in the last decade. As such, this book will present a comprehensive overview of its practice and provide ideas for future methodological approaches and a reference point for students planning professional development in order to gain future employment in this sector and beyond.

Public historians are individuals, usually trained historians, who work in either a professional or academic capacity and who engage in the practice of communicating the past to the public. Such individuals collaborate with various publics and communities to research and present their histories. Principally, they aim to facilitate open access of history to the public. Furthermore, public historians facilitate the personal involvement of the public in a diverse range of projects, ranging from group projects, such as museums exhibitions, oral history projects and community archaeology excavations, to individually led projects, such as genealogical research, archival research projects and historical blogs. This range serves to highlight the breadth of methodological approaches used to communicate history to and with the public which can include designing exhibitions in museums; interpreting history with aboriginal descendant communities; undertaking oral history projects based upon memories of the Second World War; producing material for living museums; working with local history societies to research and excavate former nineteenth-century streets; producing educational learning; and presenting television and radio programmes. The central and often deeply personal motivations for this work have been to provide a past that is relevant and accessible to the public in the present.

This book draws on first-hand experience, knowledge and self-reflection of practitioners of public history in action from around the world to provide a guide to public history for students, amateurs and professionals. It aims to give advice and guidance on best practice and the practical application of this in the workplace. Different chapters cover distinct subdivisions of public history, museums, archives and heritage centres, media, digital media, community history, education, restoration and preservation, politics and business. In an economic climate where public funding may be uncertain and the graduate employment market is competitive, undergraduate and graduate students are required to understand the broader applications of history beyond university. This book contains the tools and advice needed for them to get one step ahead in terms of knowledge, skills and experience.

Background to public history

Historians have been unable to agree on a precise definition of public history. Some historians regard this difficulty as inherent in the subject’s nature, asserting that the diversity of mediums and approaches used by its practitioners serves to hamper agreement of a commonly applicable definition.¹ As such, public history has become a catch-all phrase that can cover any historical activity that is not regarded as academic history (usually individually produced scholarly research on a specific topic aimed at expanding ‘historical knowledge’ within, but rarely beyond, the academic community).²

Public history is an intrinsic part of history today. It seeks, like all other forms of history, to broaden our understanding of the past and its contested relationship to the present.³ However, its future is uncertain. It could be argued that the failure of historians to agree a satisfactory definition of public history risks the future of the profession by jeopardizing both recognition of its value to wider communities and its status as an academically respectable form of historical research. As such, it is essential to the future practice of public history that it is clearly defined and that the role of the public historian is firmly placed within history’s professional framework. This requires professional, academic and amateur historians to move away from a tradition that has regarded public history as anti-establishment and facilitate the subject’s positioning within history’s overarching theoretical and methodological frameworks. For public history to provide evidence of its success in promoting the wider impact of history beyond university, the university departments should assist this process.

The methods developed by public historians have broken down the barriers between history professionals and the public and made history more accessible and relevant to wider society.⁴ As a result, history has become an agent of social change and has played a role in new forms of historical knowledge creation.⁵ Public history is active, reactive and relevant in the present, and as such relevant to the wider public, enabling them to connect to the past, present or future. Properly implemented, public history in action acts to counter the novelist L. P. Hartley’s often-quoted assertion that ‘the past is a foreign country’⁶ and to help communities to understand their place in modern society and the world around them. It removes the subconscious and conscious distance that ‘professional historians’ have from the public.⁷ Public history seeks to dispel boundaries between professional and the public and open up the past, enabling the public to play a role in the production and consumption of history.

Public history has been described as ‘history for the people, by the people, with the people and of the people’.⁸ This ‘manifesto’ for public history disguises that fact that the idea of ‘with’, ‘for’, ‘by’ and ‘of’ often conflicts in practice. The ‘public’ and, as a result, public history in practice are often geographically defined and politically manipulated and manifest themselves in various guises. Understanding these complex definitions of the ‘public’ and the value that history offers to it enables historians to regain control of the subject and support it to flourish among a wider audience. The concept that public history is the methods and practices used to enable involvement and understanding of history by a specific community disguises the potential for collaboration and cooperation between historians and the public. This is increasingly done without historians’ formal input, for example, genealogy and the creation of family trees and digital media projects created by local history societies.

It is this book’s premise that public historians search for patterns in human behaviour and provide a link between history and heritage. Where history seeks to explore and explain the past by researching source materials, heritage uses the past in the present, populating and personalizing the past through intangible ideas such as personal stories, folklores and traditions. Public history seeks to be both, blurring the disciplinary boundaries to make the past relevant in the present. Critically, public history is not history becoming heritage⁹ but is a merging of the two.¹⁰ As such, public history enables history to be valued and be valuable to a broad audience and to have significance in the present beyond the creation of knowledge, providing a broader social, political and economic value. Subsequently, a crucial part of a public historian’s role is decoding history’s underlying significance to people outside the profession. To do this, many public historians and sectors of public history, such as those working in the media, listen to stories and ensure, where possible, that the multiple voices are heard as part of the narrative of the past. This leads to new avenues for historical dialog through the understanding that ‘there is not a single unitary voice on the history of the site’.¹¹ Public historians are not arbiters of the ‘past’; rather, they are providers of present past narratives.

Types of public history

Public history’s lack of a specific or precise definition has enabled it to develop organically and to use a variety of methods. As such, a diverse range of projects are categorized as public history. These range from school outreach projects, digital media, historical television programmes, museums exhibitions, oral history projects and re-enactments. Each of these diverse public history mechanisms shares overarching aims – that of communication and engagement of the public in the past. To achieve this, a balance must be struck between education and entertainment, but getting that balance right has caused a debate that will be discussed further in this chapter.¹²

Public history projects adapt to their specific contexts, and thus each one tends to have unique properties. Nevertheless, overarching patterns can be found in their application in practice. As such, three distinct, identifiable approaches exist: grass-roots, institutionally led and research-led projects (Table 1.1). Despite these categorizations, the activities and groups of people involved in these approaches to public history are often more changeable and indistinct. For example, grass-roots projects, such as those led by amateurs, often require and seek support and guidance from professional historians, for example, the Muncy Project (Case study 16). Equally, research projects, those run by professionals, often rely on community members to support their research and assist them in data collection, for example, digital media projects such as Google’s Historypin (Case study 17) and the September 11 Digital Archive Project (Case study 14).

TABLE 1.1 Public history strands

Type	Description	Example
Grass-roots ‘History from below’	Also known as bottom up, these are run by individuals, local societies or community groups without being initiated by professionals.	Family History Projects, Amateur Projects, Publications and Digital Media Genealogy
Institutional ‘Top down’	Public institutions such as museums or historic sites initiate these projects. They aim to engage the public in history by providing educational or entertaining historical activities. These are also known as top down.	Learning Packs Exhibitions Digital Media Projects (Cybermuseology) Popular Media
Research ‘Top down’	Projects that are initiated by universities, academic and historical researchers. These projects have specific research aims for including community members in historical research.	Oral History Projects Community Excavation Projects

Each methodological framework for public history uses a variety of different historical research approaches to investigate the past and differs in mechanisms used to incorporate involvement or leadership of the public such as oral history, social media and archival research. These mechanisms aim to support public collaboration and cooperation in the understanding and uncovering of the past. A vital component of all public history projects is engagement with the public in order to communicate history in a relative and accessible manner. Communication is facilitated through multisensory publicly engaging activities that aim to appeal to a broad public audience such as storytelling, exhibitions, learning packs, multimedia, social media, re-enactment and reconstruction.

Definition of public history

The definition and project descriptions found within public history frequently include phrases such as communication, engagement, cooperation and collaboration. Public history could be described as ‘the communication of history to the wider public’ or the ‘the engagement of the public in the practice and production of history’. These statements place professionals in control of the past, and, as previously indicated, public history is not merely a professional endeavour; in many cases, the public are in control and history aims to become a ‘democratic’ process.

Until recently, too many historians have used the phrase ‘public history’ t...