HIST2712 - Public History: Doing History Beyond the Classroom

As recent public debates have indicated, the historical interpretation of archives, objects, monuments, and sites is not fixed or static but the result of social, political, and cultural contexts and decisions about what to communicate to a variety of audiences. Throughout this course we will be thinking about history as a collection of stories about the past. These stories require narrative choices by their tellers, and they are connected to a range of sites, practices, and scholars beyond the confines of university history departments. Our big questions will include: Who is history for/who is excluded? Which stories are being told? Why is the past of interest to the ‘public’? While many class sessions will focus on discussion of these concepts, the course will also involve learning about methods and practices in different fields of public history and will include visits to museums, libraries, and other historical sites. These visits will take place at Penn, wider Philadelphia, and (virtually) across the Atlantic (e.g. Kislak Center for Special Collections, Independence National Historical Park, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board). All will involve interactions with public history professionals whose insights into the field will contribute to students’ understanding of the many ways in which people can ‘do history’.