Rowman & Littlefield Publishers An Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences (American Association for State & Local History)

Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences is a brief foundational textbook for public history. 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. This book is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms with future public historians, teachers, and consumers of history in mind. The authors are practicing public historians who teach history and public history to a mix of undergraduate and graduate students at universities across the United States and in international contexts. This book is based on original research and the authors' first-hand experiences, offering a fresh perspective on the dynamic field of public history based on a decade of consultation with public history educators about what they needed in an introductory textbook. Each chapter introduces a concept or common practice to students, highlighting key terms for student review and for instructor assessment of student learning. The body of each chapter introduces theories, and basic conceptual building blocks intermixed with case studies to illustrate these points. Footnotes credit sources but also serve as breadcrumbs for instructors who might like to assign more in-depth reading for more advanced students or for the purposes of lecture development. Each chapter ends with suggestions for activities that the authors have tried with their own students and suggested readings, books, and websites that can deepen student exposure to the topic. Review 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 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 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" About the Author Cherstin M. Lyon is an associate professor of history and the past coordinator for the public and oral history program at