HIST 258 Making History Public: Foundations of Public History
Public history is the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world. Public historians collect, preserve, and interpret the past as museum curators, historic site interpreters, archivists, media producers, and historic preservationists. They are employed at consulting firms; federal, state, and local governments; community and non-profit organizations; museums and heritage organizations; cultural institutions; and corporations. This course will introduce you to public history’s key principles: communicating historical knowledge for non-academic audiences; working within and for a variety of bureaucracies and regulations; sharing authority with community partners; understanding the politics of memory; undertaking artifactual analysis.
Notes
I taught it as HIST 297: Special Topics once in Fall 2022.