Introduction to Public History - Spring 2024

 Week Seven: What Can "The Public Historian" Teach Us About the State of the Field The Public Historian: Comprehensive Accounts of Diverse Approaches The Public Historian was created with the intention of creating a platform for the discussion and evaluation, allowing Public Historians the opportunity to showcase their projects, struggles, and tactics as they undertake research and partake in communal relationships in the effort to preserve history. Issuing a new compilation each month, the journal seeks to keep an active account of preservation and issues circulating public memory both on terms of shared authority and shared inquiry. The issues I was given specifically contain multiple instances on the issue of shared memory, specifically on the issue of combative memory and shared authority. The articles I selected are from the May and Augusts issues from 2017. Providing a synopsis of each article, I wish to understand the how each article engages in "radical public hi...

 Week Six: Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities Preface: Introduction and Objectives      Originally designed as a method to revitalize inner cities, preservation and historic districts find themselves doing more harm than good to local residents. Andrew Hurley, author of  Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities seeks to help readers understand how historic preservation could be better weaponized in the attempt to revive inner city areas; Inner city neighborhoods can be turned into assets when subjected to public interpretation at the grassroots level (Hurley, ix). Hurley shows his work by creating a collection of examples that deal in public archaeology, addressing each narrative from "the trenches" understanding each project as innovations in the realm of public history (Hurley, x-xi). To me, this is similar to the Hungerford School project, where local leaders want to revive the property to become a...

 Week Five: Shared Authority, Shared Inquiry, and Radical Roots (cont'd) What is "Shared Authority"?      Described by Michael Frisch in the late 1980s, a "Shared Authority" is a suggestion that "something  'is' that in the nature of oral and public history, we are not the sole interpreters. Rather, the interpretive and meaning-making process is in fact shared by definition” (Clavin, 216). Sharing Authority is not so much a technical process, but rather a personal challenge to make sense of the past through emotion and reasoning; Frisch emphasizes an connection to identity, family history, and personal experiences (Clavin, 217).      Part of Frisch's discussion on Shared Authority partially refers to the understanding of celebration vs. commemoration; Commemoration refers to a competitive history that result in identity issues, whereas celebrations are used in the glorification and memorialization of people and events (Frisch, 219). This idea...

Week Four: Denise Meringolo, Radical Roots : Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism "Radical" Public History: Introductions           Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism is a collection of articles curated by Denise Meringolo in the pursuit to understand a new generation of Public History. More so, Meringolo wishes to understand the intersectional nature that exists with social justice and historical accounting; Meringolo argues that Public History is uniquely political, defining "radical public history" as a future focused, social justice based inclusion of records (Meringolo, 1-3). The radical nature of public history, as Meringolo argues, is critical to it's survival and is the exact reason the field has been able to adapt and evolve over the 19th, 20th, and 21st century (Meringolo, 17).            I question Meringolo's definition of "radical" public history, whe...

 Week Three: Reflections on the 2024 Afrofuturism Conference as Public History      Last week, I had the privilege and honor of attending the 2024 ZORA! Afrofuturism Conference to hear from speakers on public memory and acts of preservation rooted in the issues circulating Eatonville. This conferences was a quite literal representation of "putting history to work" as Public History requires. The main thing I understood in this conference was the importance of a communal input to the practice and reconciliation of public memory. I listened to representatives from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dr. Walter Greason, community activists John Beacham and Julian Johnson and Orlando Sentinel reporter Desiree Stennett to find out the gravity of the Eatonville situation and the dedication of preservation; Eatonville is more than a building or a town, but rather the survival of a fight against systematic oppression.  A Matter of Chance: The Hungerford School in the ...

Week Two: The History Harvest as Community-Engaged, "Hands-On" History The History Harvest: Origins & Methodology     The "History Harvest" and it's origins have been in debate since the first one originated in the early 2000s, with Dr. Patrick D. Jones and Dr. William G. Thomas, III, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln coining the term in 2010. The History Harvest began out of a teaching goal to educate students on the collection of the people's history. Educators came up with a solution to begin a collaborative relationship with communities and their history that wasn't on the basis of extracting information, but rather on the collection and digitalization of communal memory and history (University of Nebraska at Lincoln, 2010).      Emerging into the 21st century, we live in a world that is increasingly marked by the evolution of the digital age and experience a narrative of the victors and popular, minimizing the story of the communal experienc...

Week One: Historic Eatonville and the Fight to Preserve"America's First Incorporated Black Town" in the 21st Century Eatonville: The Creation      Following the American Civil War, many freedmen continued to live in the deep South and form their own communities. This was evident in central Florida, where Black freemen gathered to form the historic community of Eatonville, the first black settlement in the Southern states. Eatonville, since  1887, has culturally and demographically been a black settlement. Eatonville stands as an anomaly in comparison to other Black communities settled in the late 19th century. Black freedmen flocked to territories like Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, yet eventually were abandoned as the 20th century appeared; Black cities became subject to statehood and democratic rule, quickly demoting and demoralizing their chance at equal citizenship and equating them to second-class citizens ("Black Towns," 283). On top of the move from terr...