Communicating the relevance of history and historical narratives is at the core of what we do as public historians. How do we define relevance? Why is it important to communicate that relevance? What are some strategies we can use to connect to the public? What are our ultimate goals in making history relevant?
History (and sometimes badly interpreted history) can easily circulate among the public with social media. How can we use social media and other public relations approaches to strategically engage in public history practices? What are some of the dangers or disadvantages to engaging in history in this way? Each social media platform has different audiences and means of engagement – how does this create challenges and advantages in using social media as a public historian or an institution?
How can we define these terms: diversity, inclusion, columbusing, and decolonization? What questions of ethics do these readings explore in relationship to different types of community collecting, especially in communities of color? What are some ways we can address these questions of ethics head on and change our own public history practices?
What factors contribute to archival silences, and what can be done to mitigate these silences? By archivists? By members of marginalized communities? Bergis Jules talks about how archives dictate “who is remembered and how they’re remembered,” and that “how [people are remembered] dictates who gets violence perpetrated against them.” What are some examples of this? How do these examples contribute to our understanding of how archives have been and could be used?
What is Rapid Response Collecting (RRC)? What are some of the challenges with rapid response collecting? In what ways can archivists and museum personnel mitigate them? What are the ‘best practices’ of RRC? What can collecting teams learn from RRC examples that can be applied to other types of archival work? Who should be in charge of rapid response collecting during/after a major event in a community? Why? Who are the stakeholders, and how might their goals overlap or differ?
Guest Speaker: Dr. Michelle Delaney, National Museum of the American Indian
How did your understandings of decolonizing museums change or deepen this week with the additional examples Lonetree provided? What are specific examples from the NMAI and the Ziibiwing Center that were successful or not successful (or partially successful) in Lonetree’s perspective? What are the takeaways for museum practices from Lonetree regarding collections, site design, representation, and other course themes? What is repatriation, and how does it relate to these discussions of decolonization?
How do museums represent their constituencies today? How can they keep their focus on the local community while still engaging in a national conversation? How does the mission for a community-founded museum differ from other institutions?
Guest Speaker: Cynthia Prescott
History is complicated and messy. Based on these readings, how would you describe the historical process? Is history absolute and permanent or something more fluid that reflects back on the time in which it was written? How should we handle conflicting accounts of the past? How should we commemorate the past?
