public history

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  3/15/2023
  

  The Victims of Communism Museum is a Propaganda Machine for Normalizing the Hard Right

  by Billie Anania

  The museum, which counts numerous Nazi sympathizers among its founders, peddles a spurious notion of "double genocide" that lets fascists off the hook by promoting the number of 100 million victims of communism. How do they get that tally? Including every German soldier killed on the eastern front and every victim of COVID-19. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/6/2023
  

  Exhibiting the Black Panthers' Ephemera

  An exhibition of the radical group's posters illustrates the importance-and difficulty-of documenting political movements that used visual communications through ephemeral media like postering and newspapers. 

• 
• 2/26/2023
  

  Suppression of Public Commemoration is an Early Warning of Authoritarian Abuse of History

  by Ruben Zeeman

  While several laws pertaining to historical memory have been passed under nationalist regimes in Europe, other authoritarian societies actively use other laws as an excuse to suppress inconvenient historic commemorations, reflecting a broad and growing pattern of subordinating history to power.

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  2/20/2023
  

  AHA's "New" Standards for "Scholarship" are Too Little, Too Late for the Profession

  by Donald Earl Collins

  The move to recognize forms of knowledge dissemination beyond the scholarly monograph follow the establishment's failure for years to recognize the need for public engagement that has recently been taken up by journalists, novelists, and other creatives. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/02/11/
  

  Two Brothers Pushed the National Historic Landmark Program to Include Black History

  Although there are dozens of dedicated landmarks to African American history today, the activism of the DeForrest brothers to push the National Park Service toward inclusion has been forgotten. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  2/9/2023
  

  AHA: Time to Move from the Monograph to Recognize More Public Kinds of Scholarly Work

  As historians and humanists seek to demonstrate the public value of their knowledge, it doesn't make sense to make public-facing history work a career-killer, according to the AHA. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/5/2023
  

  8 Sites Illuminating African American History Show the Need for Preservation

  The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working against time and redevelopment to prevent the loss of key sites of African American history across the nation. So far the project has helped protect a museum of the Buffalo Soldiers, Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, and Louis Armstrong's house in Queens, among other sites. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/8/2023
  

  It's Up to McCarthy to Remove Statues of Slavers from the Capitol

  A third of the artworks in the Capitol depict slaveholders. Whether they're replaced with other works, possibly those celebrating liberators, is largely up to the new House Speaker. 

• 
• 2/6/2023
  

  The Heroes of Ripley, Ohio

  by David Goodrich

  David Goodrich bicycled 3,000 miles along the routes of the Underground Railroad, encountering the places of history from a new perspective. This excerpt follows him through the Ohio-Kentucky borderland and across the river that marked free territory. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  2/2/2023
  

  Native Wikipedians Fight Back against Erasure of Indigenous History

  by Kyle Keeler

  While the internet is often seen as a hotbed of revisionism and "political correctness," Wikipedia editors who seek the inclusion of indigenous perspectives on American history often are stymied by resistant editors and the platform's rules, which discount the reliability of new, critical scholarship. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  1/25/2023
  

  Beyond Mythbusting, What Should Historians Tell the Public?

  by Steven Mintz

  The success of the new "Myth America" collection shows a public appetite for confronting historical myths, but historians have to offer the public more than debunking. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  1/18/2023
  

  Bemoaning Alabama's King-Lee Holiday Misses a Bigger Point

  by Kevin M. Levin

  While white Alabama still embraces the "lost cause" mythology embodied by Robert E. Lee, outrage about the holiday he shares with Martin Luther King, Jr. shouldn't blind the public to the ongoing struggle to change the commemorative landscape—in Montgomery and nationwide. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  With Academic History in Crisis, can Departments Pivot to Reach Interested Audiences?

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Americans don't actually hate history; they often begin to appreciate it after their undergraduate years and outside of the classroom. Does this point in a possible direction for securing the future of the profession? 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/2/2023
  

  When White Contractors Wouldn't Remove Confederate Statues, a Black One Did

  Devon Henry didn't seek the job of removing a dozen Confederate memorials in Richmond, but local white-owned vendors refused the contracts. He has received death threats and wears a bulletproof vest at job sites. 

• 
• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  12/14/2022
  

  Philly's Columbus Statue is Out of the Box—So is the Discussion About His Legacy

  Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries talks about controversial statues: one removed in Richmond, and one uncovered in Philadelphia.

• 
• SOURCE: American Historical Association
  

  Does One's Historical Outlook Influence Civic Engagement?

  It's not simple to gauge whether the desire to know about the past relates to wanting to solve community problems in the present. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  11/20/2022
  

  Push Confederates Out of Gettysburg for Good

  by Kevin M. Levin

  Why are the forces that fought to preserve slavery, and who invaded the free state of Pennsylvania and kidnapped free Black Americans into slavery in 1863, allowed to march in Gettysburg's Remembrance Day parade? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/14/2022
  

  Monuments to the Unthinkable

  by Clint Smith

  German and European memorials to the Holocaust contrast starkly with an American memorial culture where the Confederate dead are revered, former slave plantations are tourist attractions, and state legislatures are seeking to ban the teaching of the nation's history in full. 

• 
• SOURCE: NextCity
  11/10/202
  

  Decades in Making, San Diego Museum will Honor Chicano Community and Movement

  "Organizers and community members hope the museum will document the history of Chicano Park and continue educating future generations about Barrio Logan’s history."

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  10/14/2022
  

  New Documentary Examines the Controversial San Francisco School Mural

  Artists and scholars debate the value of confronting historical discomfort against claims that images of violence are traumatizing. Historian Amna Khalid weighs in.