Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences (American Association for State and Local History) - Softcover

Lyon, Cherstin M.; Nix, Elizabeth M.; Shrum, Rebecca K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442272228 ISBN 13: 9781442272224

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017

Synopsis

Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences is a brief foundational public history textbook for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is organized around the questions and ethical dilemmas that drive public history in a variety of settings, from local community-based projects to international case studies.

About this title

About the Author

Cherstin M. Lyon is an associate professor of history and the past coordinator for the public and oral history program at California State University in San Bernardino where she directed that program for six years. She currently is coordinator of the interdisciplinary M.A. program in Social Sciences and Globalization that offers a track in public history and museum studies. She is author of Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory, published by Temple University Press in 2012.

Elizabeth Nix is an Associate Professor of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies and the Director of the Helen P. Denit Honors Program at the University of Baltimore. An American Studies graduate of the undergraduate program at Yale and the Ph.D. program at Boston University, Nix was part of the steering committee for Baltimore '68, the winner of the National Council on Public History Outstanding Project award in 2009 and an award of Merit and the WOW Award from the American Association of State and Local History in that same year.

Rebecca K. Shrum is an Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Director of the Public History Program at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) where she works with both graduate and undergraduate students studying public history. Along with local partners, she also directs the IUPUI Public History Program’s Curatescape project, Discover Indiana, available at discoverIN.org. Her research interests include early American history, material culture and identity, and historic site interpretation. She is author of In the Looking Glass: Mirrors and Identity in Early America, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2017.

Review

Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences is intended primarily for undergraduate audiences. It is crisply written, and the co-authors—Cherstin Lyon, Elizabeth Nix, and Rebecca Shrum—zero in on the ‘big questions that underpin the how and . . . why of public history’ (1). At the outset they tackle the ever-present question of what distinguishes public history from academic history, and they do so succinctly by identifying three key elements: audience, collaboration, and reflective practice (2–3). They also provide a clear explanation of what unites academic and public history: historical thinking, historical methods, and heuristics. The authors skillfully navigate readers through some of the key scholarly works that have influenced public history as an academic discipline.... Although undergraduates may be the primary audience, the introductory chapter is one that all of us could benefit from reading. (The Public Historian)

This book provides an innovative look at the practice of public history for students beginning to explore opportunities in the field. Rather than simply present careers, the authors focus on the key theories and principles of public history from collecting to interpretation to engaging an audience, along with a variety of case studies and teaching resources. Introduction to Public History will quickly become an essential book for undergraduate and some graduate courses, but it will also be valuable for interns and new practitioners. (Ann McCleary, professor of history, coordinator, Public History and Museum Studies Programs, University of West Georgia)

Like the best work in the field itself, this book is accessible and engaging, laced with new and familiar narratives, attuned to past injustices and their present-day reverberations, and deeply committed to the task of combining rigorous historical analysis with the creation of space for considering multiple, sometimes competing understandings of the past. There is plenty here about “how,” but always in dialogue with the crucial questions of “why.” (Cathy Stanton, Department of Anthropology, Tufts University and author of “The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City”)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1442272228
• ISBN 13: 9781442272224
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200