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For the last few years there have been an increasing number of job ads by colleges and universities looking for professors who specialize in public history. Yet, curiously enough, public history is a discipline of history that comparatively few members of the public actually know about. And, often, even those people who are looking to employ someone who knows public history have a hard time explaining what public history actually means.
With Al Zambone this week to define and explain public history is Thomas Cauvin. He is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which happens to be right in the middle of Cajun Country. He has been involved in many public history initiatives, including travelling and online exhibitions, and crowdsourcing projects. In 2016 Routledge will publish his Public History: A Textbook of Practice. A citizen of France, he earned his PHD in Italy, and has taught in France, Italy, Ireland, and now the United States. Have a listen, cher; it’ll be a true bon temps.
For Further Investigation
-Cauvin, Thomas. Public History. A Textbook of Practice, London/New York: Routledge, (forthcoming 2016).
-Evans, Jennifer. “What is Public History”, Public History Resource Center, 2000, http://www.publichistory.org/what_is/definition.html (accessed June 2014)
-Meringolo, Denise. Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts, 2012.
-Nick Sacco, Exploring the Past: the blog of a public historian
Thank you Al for inviting me to talk about Public History. Just read this morning that “Public history, which combines both topical and professional dimensions, had the fastest growth of any field in the 1975 Guide—rising from 0.1 percent of the listed faculty to 2.3 percent today. ” See http://historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/the-rise-and-decline-of-history-specializations-over-the-past-40-years