The Engaged Historian

On the surface, historical scholarship might seem thoroughly incompatible with political engagement: the ideal historian, many imagine, is a disinterested observer focused exclusively on the past. In truth, however, political action and historical research have been deeply intertwined for as long as the historical profession has existed. In this insightful collection, practicing historians analyze, reflect on, and share their experiences of this complex relationship. From the influence of historical scholarship on world political leaders to the present-day participation of researchers in post-conflict societies and the Occupy movement, these studies afford distinctive, humane, and stimulating views on historical practice and practitioners

What is socially engaged art history? Art history is typically understood as a discipline in which academics produce scholarship for consumption by other academics. Today however, an increasing number of art historians are seeking to broaden their understanding of art historical praxis and look beyond the academy and towards socially engaged art history. This is the first book-length study to focus on these growing and significant trends. It presents various arguments for the social, pedagogical, and scholarly benefits of alternative, community-engaged, public-facing, applied, and socially engaged art history. The international line up of contributors includes academics, museum and gallery curators as well as arts workers. The first two sections of the book look at socially engaged art history from theoretical, pedagogical, and contextual perspectives. The concluding part offers a range of provocative case studies that highlight the varied and rigorous work that is being done in this area and provide a variety of inspiring models. Taken together the chapters in this book provide much-needed disciplinary recognition to socially engaged art history, while also serving as a springboard to further theoretical and practical work.

How can history be taught effectively? Does knowing about the past give meaning to the present and hints to what will happen in the future? This book responds to these questions as it explores the key elements of history instruction-the use of primary sources and narratives, involving students in the historical inquiry through classroom discussions, teaching toward chronological thinking, and the use of historical documents to develop in students a "detective approach" to solving historical problems. Taking a systematic approach to improve students' historical thinking, this book emphasizes certain strategies that will help students know more about the past in ways that will help them in their lives today. The second edition is organized in three parts-Part One describes the theoretical background to teaching history. Part Two, "Planning and Assessment," emphasizes the importance of good organization and lesson planning as well as how to assess students' knowledge, reasoning power, and effective use of communication in the history classroom. Part Three, "Instruction," focuses on the use of primary sources, class discussions, incorporating photographs and paintings, and writing in teaching history. Both the study of history and the teaching of history are multifaceted. The author's hope in writing this book is to engage new and experienced teachers in thoughtful discourse regarding the teaching and learning of history and to develop lifelong learners of history in the 21st century.

Reading films, television dramas, reality shows, and virtual exhibits, among other popular texts, Engaging the Past examines the making and meaning of history for everyday viewers. Contemporary media can encourage complex interactions with the past that have far-reaching consequences for history and politics. Viewers experience these representations personally, cognitively, and bodily, but, as this book reveals, not just by identifying with the characters portrayed. Some of the works considered in this volume include the films Hotel Rwanda (2004), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), and Milk (2008); the television dramas Deadwood, Mad Men, and Rome; the reality shows Frontier House, Colonial House, and Texas Ranch House; and The Secret Annex Online, accessed through the Anne Frank House website, and the Kristallnacht exhibit, accessed through the Unites States Holocaust Museum website. These mass cultural texts cultivate what Alison Landsberg calls an "affective engagement" with the past, tying the viewer to an event or person and fostering a sense of intimacy that does more than transport the viewer back in time. Affect, she suggests, can also work to disorient the viewer, forcibly pushing him or her out of the narrative and back into his or her own body. By analyzing these specific popular history formats, Landsberg shows the unique way they provoke historical thinking and produce historical knowledge, prompting a reconsideration of what constitutes history and an understanding of how history works in the contemporary mediated public sphere.

For all of the recent debates over the methods and theoretical underpinnings of the historical profession, scholars and laypeople alike still frequently think of history in terms of storytelling. Accordingly, historians and theorists have devoted much attention to how historical narratives work, illuminating the ways they can bind together events, shape an argument and lend support to ideology. From ancient Greece to modern-day bestsellers, the studies gathered here offer a wide-ranging analysis of the textual strategies used by historians. They show how in spite of the pursuit of truth and objectivity, the ways in which historians tell their stories are inevitably conditioned by their discursive contexts.

While all history has the potential to be political, public history is uniquely so: public historians engage in historical inquiry outside the bubble of scholarly discourse, relying on social networks, political goals, practices, and habits of mind that differ from traditional historians. Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism theorizes and defines public history as future-focused, committed to the advancement of social justice, and engaged in creating a more inclusive public record. Edited by Denise D. Meringolo and with contributions from the field’s leading figures, this groundbreaking collection addresses major topics such as museum practices, oral history, grassroots preservation, and community-based learning. It demonstrates the core practices that have shaped radical public history, how they have been mobilized to promote social justice, and how public historians can facilitate civic discourse in order to promote equality. "This is a much-needed recalibration, as professional organizations and practitioners across genres of public history struggle to diversify their own ranks and to bring contemporary activists into the fold." — Catherine Gudis, University of California, Riverside. "Taken all together, the articles in this volume highlight the persistent threads of justice work that has characterized the multifaceted history of public history as well as the challenges faced in doing that work."—Patricia Mooney-Melvin, The Public Historian

While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians. Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.