2007 December Newsletter.Indd
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Volume 28 • Number 1 • December 2007 NATIONAL COUNCIL Public Histor y News ON PUBLIC HISTORY Inside This Issue Students’ Focus on Photo Blurs Boundaries by Benjamin Filene 2 bpfi[email protected] Touring Kentucky Traditional history classes aim to teach students how to think like historians. So should public history classes get them to think like public historians? 6 What would that mean, and what would it look President’s Comments like? As a first-year director of UNC Greensboro’s public history program, I pondered these issues as I considered how to plan final projects for my graduate seminar on Museum and Historic Site Interpretation, 7 a required class for first-year Master’s students in From the Director’s Desk history who concentrate in museum studies. To help these students see—feel—what makes public history distinctive, I settled on four teaching goals for 8 the final project. I wanted them to Actions of the Board of Directors • work with community members; • collaborate with each other; • think of their work as public storytelling; and finally 9 • end up with a tangible public product for public Former Baldwin Chapel students at “the Class of ‘63” exhibit opening. Courtesy of High Point Museum, NC. National Coalition for History Update audiences. She taught four generations of African Americans in To anyone with public history experience, these goals the neighborhood before her death in 2000. Julius, probably seem familiar. But how would they translate a former student, inherited her house. With no 14 to a university setting? In the end, the stumbling training or experience in public history, he decided Roosevelt’s New Deal, 75 Years Later blocks my students and I faced illustrated for me how to open the house as a museum. public history fits awkwardly into academia. At the > continued on page 11 same time, our successes gave me hope that a public history program can indeed serve as a tool for civic engagement, and emphasized how much public and A quarterly publication academic historians share the same toolkit. of the National Council on Public History in cooperation with But first I took a deep breath and called Julius Clark. the Department of History, Julius is the director of the Rosetta C. Baldwin Indiana University-Purdue Museum in High Point, fifteen miles down the road University Indianapolis. from Greensboro. I had heard about him and the museum from another local museum colleague, Edith Brady, curator of education at the High Point Bill Bryans, President Museum. I had talked to Edith about my interest in collaborating with a local institution, and she had Marianne Babal, Vice President mentioned the Baldwin Museum. Rosetta Baldwin started teaching school in her High Point living Robert Weible, Past President room in 1942. Eventually she moved her school, Mark Your Calendar! affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Patrick Moore, Secretary-Treasurer to a church basement and then to its own building. Registration for the 2008 Annual Meeting opens December 1. Register at www.ncph.org. John Dichtl, Executive Director • The Historic Locust Grove tour on Walk along the shoreline and observe PLANS FOR THE 2008 ANNUAL MEETING Saturday brings visitors to the final home prehistoric fossil formations from the days of Louisville founder George Rogers when an ocean covered the area. Clark, the preeminent American military leader in the West during the American • Louisville is one of four communities in War for Independence. He was the elder the U.S. to boast an Olmsted Parks and Touring Kentucky, April 2008 brother of Jefferson County, Kentucky, Parkway System. Begun by Frederick native William Clark, co-leader with Law Olmsted in 1891, the Louisville • Led by sports historian John E. Findling, • A Friday excursion across the mighty Merriwether Lewis of the Corps of project was halfway between Olmsted’s the sports history tour on Thursday will Ohio River into Floyd County, Indiana, Discovery. Observe a Revolutionary War commissions for the grounds of the feature the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory, will take tour participants to the AASLH reenactment on the far western frontier at Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the new and award-winning Muhammad award-winning Underground Railroad this thriving plantation. Biltmore in Ashville, North Carolina. Ali Center, the world-renown Churchill exhibit at the Carnegie Center for Art Louisville’s relationship with the Olmsted Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum, & History. Filson Institute Director of • Saturday sends participants to Bardstown firm spans into the 1960s, and includes and other sports venues. Research Glenn Crothers and Canadian to learn about fine spirit-making, where numerous corporate and residential historian and archaeologist Karolyn we are pleased to offer an exclusive tour of commissions in addition to parks-90 • The tour of Cave Hill Cemetery on Smardz Frost, author of, I’ve Got A Heaven Hill Distillery and the Bourbon projects in all. Thursday will include funerary art and Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of Heritage Center. The distillery will send local history and lore about the best The Underground Railroad, will lead the Heaven Hill shuttle to the Brown • Old Louisville Historic District is tops in “final” address for Louisvillians. Explore discussions exploring the history and Hotel to ferry thirty-three lucky individuals the nation for the number of Victorian this beautiful park-like setting, resting place memory of the Underground Railroad, to the center of bourbon production in residences in one neighborhood. The of local and national celebrities, Colonel from the Ohio River Valley to Canada. the world. Note: participants must be 21 years historic district is the first ring suburb of George Rogers Clark, Colonel Sanders, of age (with legal ID) to sample the spirits. Louisville and a manageable walk from and stonemason Michael Muldoon, and the Brown Hotel. With the Ohio River Louisville Slugger Museum. Courtesy of Greater Louisville Convention & Visitor’s Bureau. countless politicians, social reformers, and The following are not scheduled as tours but as our northern boundary, the city’s community leaders. The tour is a stretch of are definitely worth attention: development has moved south, west, and the legs, and requires walking. east. Kentucky ranks fourth in the nation The Brennan House & Medical Office Museum in Louisville, KY. Courtesy of Donna Neary. • The Falls of the Ohio Museum in for the number of properties listed in the • Public engagement through archaeology is southern Indiana, right across the river National Register, and boast 30 National by Donna Neary the subject of the Friday tour of Riverside, from Louisville, is home to the oldest Historic Landmarks, ten of which are [email protected] the Farnsley-Moremen Landing, the Devonian Fossil beds in the world. located in Louisville. David Farnsley House, and the Portland The NCPH Annual Meeting in Louisville next Wharf site. Archeologists and historians spring takes full advantage of local landscape will discuss successful programs and cultural features of the host city and partnering these allied fields to teach Best Practices in Public History Education region. Rather than being concentrated on school-aged children how to look below New Awards from NCPH one day, as in past conferences, tours will take the surface to learn about the past in our The NCPH Curriculum and Training Committee is working on place on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. communities. developing “best practices” recommendations for public history Bourbon bottle, 19th century. Courtesy of Gettysburg National Apply today! training, and would like your help. The committee is focusing Military Park. on five areas, which are listed below, followed by the committee member working on each topic: CONSULTANT AWARD 1. the structure of MA programs in public history (Ann This $500 award recognizes excellence in consulting McCleary) or contract work in the field of public history. 2. certificate programs in public history (Donna DeBlasio) 3. undergraduate public history programs (Cherstin Lyons) THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON PUBLIC HISTORY 4. internships (Steve Berg) OUTSTANDING PUBLIC HISTORY PROJECT AWARD 5. the introductory course to public history (Ivan Steen) Given the essential value of historical understanding, the National Council on Public History promotes A $1,000 award for a project that contributes to a professionalism among history practitioners and their engagement with the public. broader public reflection and appreciation of the Over the next few months, members of the committee will be past or that serves as a model of professional public initiating discussion on the NCPH listserv for public history history practice. Public History News is published in March, June, September, and December. Individual membership orders, changes educators to gather ideas. (Please visit the graduate and of address, and business and editorial correspondence should be addressed to National Council on Public History, undergraduate education page on the NCPH web site for more 327 Cavanaugh Hall – IUPUI, 425 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140. E-mail: [email protected]. GRADUATE STUDENT TRAVEL AWARD information about joining this listserv.) We hope that you will engage in the conversation! The committee will present its Tel: 317-274-2716. New members are welcome. Join online or renew at www.ncph.org. Five $300 travel grants for graduate students who have a paper, poster, or other presentation accepted preliminary findings at the 2008 Annual Meeting in Louisville in Institutional subscription orders, changes of address, and business correspondence should be addressed to Journals for inclusion in the program of the 2008 NCPH a session on Saturday, April 12, entitled “Best Practices in Public and Digital Publishing Division, University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. Annual Meeting. History Curricula: Program Structure and the Introductory Course: Or visit www.ucpress.edu. A Facilitated Audience Conversation.” We welcome submissions to Public History News sent to John Dichtl, Editor, at the above address.