996002 Public and Local History: Methods, Concepts, and Issues (S) (SoSe 2017)

Even given the increasingly global outlook and connections of the historical profession, much of the day-to-day work of historians is rooted in place and depends upon engagement with a specific locality. This workshop offers a transatlantic perspective on history as a locally based professional and craft. The workshop will discuss practical topics: archives, museums, exhibitions, digital history, historical sites, monuments, and historic preservation, for example. But along the way, we will consider a variety of professional and theoretical matters, starting with whether the distinction between public and academic history has any use or meaning, does the concept of the public have any coherence, and how can an historian in practice appreciate the local in a way that integrates the global. To the extent that it is practical, the workshop will be supplemented by presentations from practitioners in Bielefeld and nearby cities and by excursions to accessible places that illustrate the methods and issues under consideration.

DAY 1

Session 1, 10.15-12.00: History, heritage, and the public (Lessoff) Readings
David Glassberg, “Public History and the Study of Memory,” The Public Historian 18 (Spring 1996): 7-23.
James Oliver Horton, “Slavery in American History: An Uncomfortable National Dialogue,” in Slavery and Public History. The Tough Stuff of American Memory, ed. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton (New York: New Press, 2006), 35-55.
David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Free Press, 1996), selection to be announced.

Session 2, 13.15-14.45: The Fiftieth Anniversay of Bielefeld University as regional and public history (Jürgen Büschenfeld & Martin Löning, Uni-Bielefeld. In German/English)

Session 3, 15.15-16.45: Stadtgeschichte zwischen wissenschaftlichem Anspruch und Histotainment: Das Stadtjubliläum 800 Jahre Bielefeld 2014 [Local history, historical research and infotainmt: The City Jubilee 800 Years Bielefeld 2014] (Jürgen Büschenfeld, Bielefeld University. In German/English)

DAY 2

Session 4, 9.15-10.45: Public history in urban space (Lessoff) Readings
David Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), ch. 1, 6.
Alan Lessoff, Where Texas Meets the Sea: Corpus Christi and Its History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), ch. 4.
Norman Tyler, et al., Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practices, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2009), ch. 6.

Session 5, 11.15-12.45: Museums and their public
Robert C. Post, Who Owns America’s Past? The Smithsonian and the Problem of History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), ch. 9.
Eric Gable and Richard Handler, “Public History, Private Memory: Notes from the Ethnography of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, USA” Ethnos 65.2 (2000): 237-52.
Lucian Gomoll, “Objects of Dis/Order: Articulating Curiosities and Engaging People at the Freakatorium,” in Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities, ed. Amy K. Levin (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2007), 201-16. (The Freakatorium was a curiosity museum run in New York from 1999 to 2005 by a performer named Johnny Fox, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Fox_%28performer%29. Read the essay, and you’ll see the connection.)

Guided tour, 14.15-15.45: Historisches Museum Bielefeld, Ravensberger Park (in German).

Summary discussion, 16.15-16.45, at the Historisches Museum

Trip to Mindener Museum, Minden, Friday, 7 July: Time to be announced. Tour and explanation of Menschen, Schiffe und Maloche, an exhibition about the Mindener Häfen (Minden Harbors) that Dr. Büschenfeld and students from Bielefeld worked with the museum to plan. Optional, but encouraged for workshop participants. Philipp Koch, the curator of the museum, will lead our group. (In German/ translation by the participants.)

Bibliography

Some background readings, based on the instructor's U.S. seminars:

David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (2001)
David Hamer, History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States (1998)
Andrew Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (2010)
David T. Kyvig and Myron Marty, Nearby History: Exploring the Past around You, 3rd edition (2010)
Denise D. Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Geneology of Public History (2012)
Ian Tyrrell, Historians in Public: The Practice of United States History, 1890-1970 (2005)