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Elena Razlogova Introduction to Public History Sample Syllabus Description In recent decades, historians who attempt to reach the wider public have had to contend with national museum controversies, commercial projects such as the History Channel, and the rise of the Internet. This course will introduce students to the theoretical and practical issues confronting public historians today. Readings will address questions of audience and authority in collecting and presenting history; the relationship between history and national, communal, and personal memory; the politics of public history; and the production and dissemination of history in diverse formats and media. These critical, methodological, and theoretical readings will provide the basis for the hands-on section of the course in which students will develop proposals for a public history project--a museum exhibit, an oral history, or a website. Requirements and Grades There are five main requirements for this course: 1. Active Participation in discussions, both online and in class. 2. A 10-minute practice interview. 3. An analysis of a material culture object. 4. A Review Essay, in which you will access the coverage of a particular historical topic in several Public History forms and media. 5. A Public History Project Proposal--one of three options: a) a plan for a museum exhibit; b) an oral history project; or c) a digital history project. These major requirements will make up your final grade with the different items roughly weighed as follows: participation (15%); practice interview (10%); material object analysis (10%); review essay (30%); project proposal (35%). There will be an online component to class participation. This component is meant to extend discussion beyond our meeting times, to encourage debates on your projects, and to define this seminar as a workshop and a group experience. Everyone is strongly encouraged to post reflections on the class discussions, readings, and projects to our class email list. As a general guideline, you should initiate online discussion at least twice and respond to topics raised by others at least twice. Readings Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic : Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). Richard White, Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004). Optional Reference: James B. Gardner and Peter S. Lapaglia, eds., Public History: An Introduction (Rev. Ed.; Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing, 2004). Much of the additional reading will be available in xerox or online. Syllabus Week 1: What Is Public History? Introduction, Requirements, and Themes Week 2: Oral History Workshop Read: Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History http://www.dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html Week 3: Oral History, Community, and Memory Read: Frisch, Shared Authority Susan Geiger, "What's So Feminist about Doing Women's Oral History?" in Expanding the Boundaries of Women's History: Essays on Women in the Third World , ed. Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel (1992), 305-318 . James R. Green, "Engaging in People's History: The Massachusetts History Workshop," in Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public (1986). Alessandro Portelli, "The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event," in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (1991). Visit and Evaluate: Will the Circle Be Unbroken (listen to sample interview excerpts) http://www.unbrokencircle.org/ The Sonic Memorial Project http://sonicmemorial.org/sonic/public/index.html Due: Practice Interview Write and Post to the email list: Practice interview transcript and analysis Week 4: Museum Exhibit Production Workshop Read: David Dean, "The Exhibition Development Process," in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (2nd ed.; 1999). Communications Design Team, Royal Ontario Museum, "Spatial Considerations," in The Educational Role of the Museum. John Hennigar Shuh, "Teaching Yourself to Teach with Objects," in The Educational Role of the Museum. Michael Baxandall, "Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects," in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (1991). Week 5: Museums and Collective Memories Read: Wallace, Introduction, Sections I and IV in Mickey Mouse History Alan Wallace, "The Battle over 'The West as America'" in Art Apart: Art and Ideology Across England and North America , ed. Marcia Pointon (1994). Alison Landsberg, "America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Memory," New German Critique 71 (Spring/Summer 1997): 63-86 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Objects of Ethnography," in Exhibiting Cultures. Visit and Evaluate: Enola Gay: Former Exhibition, National Air and Space Museum http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/gal103/gal103_former.html George Catlin and His Indian Gallery (virtual exhibit and Catlin Classroom) http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/catlin/index.html The Lost Museum http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/ Write and Post to the email list: Analysis of a Material Object (illustrated) Week 6: Digital History Workshop Prepare: Bring your password to your web hosting account, a free trial copy of Dreamweaver MX 2004, and a free Internet file transfer program (WS-FTP, Secure Shell, Fetch, or Fugu) Read: Paula Petrik, "Top Ten Mistakes in Academic Web Design," History Computer Review (May 2000) http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/topten.html Jacob Nielsen, Alertboxes: Larry Gales, "Web Page Design Inspired by Edward Tufte" http://staff.washington.edu/larryg/Classes/Rinflux/zz-influx.html Reference: Dreamweaver Tutorial: http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.html Intro to HTML: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/53/index0a.html?tw=authoring HTML Teaching Tool: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/index.html HTML Cheatsheet: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet/index.html Derek M. Powazek, The Basic, Basic Table: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/47/index3a.html?tw=authoring Week 7: Scholarship and Public History Online Read: Edward A. Ayers, "The Pasts and Futures of Digital History" (1999) http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vcdh/PastsFutures.html "Forum on Hypertext Scholarship: AQ as Web-Zine: Responses to AQ's Experimental Online Issue," American Quarterly (June 1999) available online through Project Muse. Lev Manovich, "What Is New Media" and "The Forms," in The Language of New Media (2001). Visit and Evaluate: The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu September 11: Bearing Witness to History http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/ One of the following three AQ essays available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/ Louise Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz, "Dreaming Arnold Schwarzenegger" Thomas Thurston, "Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts" David Westbrook, "From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip" Week 8: Review Essay Presentations Write, Post on the Web, Present: Review Essay (Note: presentations should be five minutes long with five minutes of discussion) Week 9: The Politics of Archiving and Historic Preservation Read: Wallace, Section III in Mickey Mouse History Barbara Howe, "Historic Preservation: An Interdisciplinary Field," in Public History: An Introduction (1986) Roy Rosenzweig, "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era," American Historical Review (June 2003) http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/scarcity.html Visit and Evaluate: American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html Week 10: Individual Meetings to Discuss Projects No regular class; individual meetings to discuss projects. Week 11: Public History and Storytelling View in class: A Midwife's Tale (1997) Read: White, Remembering Ahanagran William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78 (March 1992): 1347-76. Robert Rosenstone, "The Reel Joan of Arc: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of the Historical Film,"Public Historian 25.3 (Summer 2003): 61-77. Steve Dietz, "Telling Stories: Procedural Authorship and Extracting Meaning from Museum Databases" http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/dietz/dietz.html Visit and Evaluate: Do History http://dohistory.org Week 12: Public Memory and Popular History Read: Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic Wallace, Section II in Mickey Mouse History Visit and Evaluate: National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/ The History Channel http://www.historychannel.com Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America http://www.journale.com/withoutsanctuary/ Week 13: From Vernacular History to Shared Authority Read: Rosenzweig and Thelen, The Presence of the Past Carl Becker, "Everyman His Own Historian," American Historical Review 37.2 (January 1932): 221-236. John Kuo Wei Tchen, "Back to the Basics: Who Is Researching and Interpreting for Whom?" Journal of American History 81 (December 1994): 1004-1010. Visit and Evaluate: The Presence of the Past Questionnaire http://chnm.gmu.edu/survey/question.html Week 14: Presentation of Final Projects Student project proposal presentations. Week 15: Presentations of Final Projects Project presentations continued. Final Projects Due |