To Intern or Not to Intern?: Internships and Volunteer Opportunities for Historians

On Monday August 19, the National Council on Public History posted “Unpaid Internships: A foot in the door or a step backward?” on their History@Work blog. In this roundtable discussion, four public historians offered their insights on whether historians should “pursue unpaid internships or volunteer opportunities as part of [their] professional training.” The panel did not reach a consensus. I believe that historians who want to work for public history organizations need to seek out pre-employment experience through internships or volunteer work. Given the current economic climate and number of people looking to enter this line of work, my experience has shown that these opportunities are likely to be unpaid and competition stiff.

My Story

While in graduate school, I volunteered at public history organizations like the Albany Institute of History & Art, the New York State Museum, and the Van Schaick Mansion. I also entered graduate school with a background in public history: I worked as a seasonal interpretive ranger at the Boston National Historical Park for 5 years. I thought that I could translate this experience and my academic credentials into a public history job. However, my academic training and interpretive background were not enough. Public history organizations want job candidates with more diversified skill sets.

Historical organizations in Boston tend to favor candidates with either a master's degree in library science (from programs that teach students social media skills and about digital humanities) or an M.B.A. in non-profit management.

After a few failed applications for public history positions, I changed my strategy. If these organizations want historians with a background in non-profit management and fundraising, then I would find a way to acquire experience with those skills.

I kept my eyes peeled for paid internships, but I did not see any.

There are two reasons for the paucity of paid public history internships:

First, most public history organizations do not have the money to pay for enough staff let alone interns.

Second, competition for unpaid internships is stiff. How stiff? I may have a Ph.D. and a willingness to learn, but that did not help me best the undergrads and master's students who garnered the advertised internships I applied for.

Seek Your Own Opportunities

Frustrated, but not deterred by my lack of success, I created my own opportunities. Rather than seek out internships with well-known public history organizations, I sought opportunities at smaller organizations.

First, I contacted Boston by Foot. This non-profit organization coordinates over 200 volunteer docents who lead history and architecture tours of Boston. At first, I volunteered to be a docent. However, as I went through their “Guides-in-Training” program, I realized that with a staff of two, I might be able to assist the organization in a mutually beneficial way. I asked the organizational director if I could volunteer in a way that would help them and allow me to learn more about how to run a non-profit. End result: I am learning how to cultivate corporate sponsorships.

Second, I e-mailed the South End Historical Society. I explained that I wanted to explore a transition into public history and asked if I could volunteer. Short on staff, they gladly took me up on my offer. Presently, I am serving on the House Tour Committee, which organizes and coordinates the largest fundraiser for the organization.

5 Valuable Lessons       

My search for public history employment and internships has taught me several valuable lessons:

1.     Do not discount the specialized skill sets and training public history organizations want. They hire people who possess experience with social media, digital humanities, and non-profit management.

2.  A Ph.D. in history does not automatically lead to a public history job or internship.

3.     Seek out and create your own opportunities. If an opportunity with well-known historical organizations does not work out, research and reach out to smaller organizations.

4.     Be specific about the opportunities you want. Tell historical organizations what it is you want to learn, why they can help you acquire this knowledge, and what skills you possess that they might make use of.

5.     Don’t be afraid to volunteer if you have the means to do so. Unpaid internships/volunteer opportunities pay, just not in money. Instead, you will gain experiences and connections that you will later use to obtain a paying job.

What Do You Think?

Do you think historians should pursue unpaid internships and volunteer opportunities as a part of their professional training?

The American Revolution Reborn: Concluding Roundtable

Welcome to the final post of my Revolution Reborn Conference Recap series. (See Part 1: Opening Roundtable Part 2: Global Perspectives Part 3: The Revolution as Civil War Part 4: Violence and the American Revolution Part 5: Power and the American Revolution)

Concluding Roundtable

Moderator: Brendan McConville

Discussants: Kathleen DuVal, Claudio Saunt, Thomas Slaughter, & Alan Taylor

Biggest Takeaway: Historians should view the Revolution as a great event that brought limited change to American society.

Biggest Question: (Posed by Brendan McConville) If scholars decenter the political and ideological from their narratives of the Revolution, are they still talking about the Revolution?

Panel Summary

DuVal stated that the Revolution Reborn Conference has shown that historians have achieved their first goal: A denaturalization of the nation-state central narrative. Today, scholars look to tell the story of the Revolution by focusing on the people left out of the Revolutionary promise.

Saunt discussed 4 themes and subjects that the conference did not discuss:

1. Environment (Hsiung’s paper excepted) 2. Biology 3. GIS technology and how historians can apply it to study the Revolution. 4. Digital Humanities and how historians can use the scholarship of that field to explore the Revolution.

Slaughter believes that a true synthesis of the American Revolution will discuss the Revolution as a process. During the Revolution the outcome of events seemed uncertain and the meaning of events emerged with hindsight. Historians should leave their readers with thoughtful questions about the Revolution rather than give blind answers to questions that no one has asked.

Taylor acknowledged that it was tough to be the last speaker, especially with Samuel Adams Beer Company sponsoring the concluding reception. Taylor believes that the Revolution was a retrograde movement that limited liberty. The Revolution created powerful contradictions rather than powerful resolutions. The Revolution’s moderate broadening of citizenship accompanied a narrowing that excluded anyone who refused the invitation to join the movement. Taylor believes that the Revolution remains more important than ever because it is embedded as selective memory in almost every contemporary debate.

Incidentally, Alan discussed his new book-in-progress, a sequel to [amazon_link id="0142002100" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]American Colonies[/amazon_link] that will discuss the Revolution. His story will run from 1750 to the 1820s and move away from the East Coast. Alan will situate the American Revolution in a global context.

Future Dates for Panels & Conferences on the American Revolution

Mark your calendars! There are more American Revolution-focused panels and conferences coming up.

October 3-5, 2013: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, Montreal, Quebec, “The Quebec Act of 1774: Transnational Contexts, Meanings, and Legacies”

Winter 2014: Boston Area Early American Seminar, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA, Panel Discussion: “The Law and the American Revolution”

Spring 2015: Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA, Tentative Title: “New Revolutions?” There will be a call for papers.

May 2015: Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Tentative Title: “Revolutionary America: People and Power”

2016 or 2017: Williams College, Williamstown, MA, Conference Title To Be Determined

If you know of more American Revolution-focused events or if you would like to agree or engage with the points and questions raised by this conference please leave a comment.

The American Revolution Reborn: Power and the American Revolution Recap

Welcome to Part 5 of my Revolution Reborn Conference Recap. (See Part 1: Opening Roundtable Part 2: Global Perspectives Part 3: The Revolution as Civil War Part 4: Violence and the American Revolution)

Power and the American Revolution

Chair: Woody Holton

Panelists:

Mark Boonshoft, “‘Calculated to Awake their Boyish Emulation’: The Great Awakening, Academies, and the American Revolution"

Matthew Spooner (Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University), “Disorder, Slave Property, and Economic Development in the Revolutionary South”

Bryan Rosenblithe (Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University), “Where Tyranny Begins: British Imperial Expansion and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1758-1766”

Biggest Takeaway: Power further complicates the story of the American Revolution. Historians need to address the experiences of the poor, elite, loyalists, revolutionaries, disaffected, slaves, and imperial viewpoints when they discuss power and the Revolution.

Biggest Question: How do scholars frame a narrative of the Revolution to include the experiences of the educated elite, slaves, and the implications of European imperial politics?

Panel Summary

Boonshoft wanted to show how the Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies set the stage for the Revolution. Until now historians have promulgated the view that the Awakening affected the Revolution by democratizing political relations. However, Boonschoft sees the Awakening as giving rise to a group of elitist conservatives, not democratic insurgents. The Awakening did not democratize social relations. Education lay at the heart of many of the constitutional disputes during the Revolution. The Revolution proved a signal moment in the lives of the Revolutionary generation because the Revolution allowed them to take the reins of power.

Spooner argued that southern society amplified the power, messiness, disorder, disaffection, and violence of the American Revolution. Scholars will be able to see both the promise and the limits of the Revolution if they study the South. Spooner also pointed out that the present historiography contains books about the Revolution and books about slavery. He would like to see slavery included in historians’ narratives about the Revolution.

Rosenblithe proposed extending the periodization of the Revolution to the 1750s. The British acquisition of territory during the French and Indian War effected how people looked at imperial politics. These views indicate that the Peace of Paris 1763 proved tenuous at best. The Revolution was a moment of imperial rupture. Scholars must deepen their understanding of eighteenth-century European imperial politics to understand the Revolution as a crisis of empire.

Official Commentary

Annette Gordon-Reed

David Shields

Gordon-Reed admitted that with all of the new scholarship coming out, she thought that the Revolution had already been reborn. Gordon-Reed believes that this new scholarship is important because most people do not really think of, or see, the tragedy of the Revolution. Historians need to unpack white supremacy as they craft their new narrative. Gordon-Reed noted that she has seen new African emigrants to the United States write that they are white on documents because being white means something.

Shields remarked that the concept of power haunted the imaginations of human beings on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the Age of Revolutions. He drew attention to the fact that Michael Zuckerman opted to call the conference “Revolution Reborn,” which has a biological connotation rather than “Revolution Rebooted,” which is technical.

Sampling of Question & Answer Remarks

Question: What do you think of the power of leadership when it comes to winning the Revolutionary War?

Boonshoft answered that leadership was important. Revolutions have leaders and leaders come out of revolutions. Boonshoft does not want to displace stories of the messiness of the Revolution, or the stories about a bottom-up movement, but he believes that leaders and elites had a place in the Revolution and that historians should be attuned to the people who constrained, and were constrained, by the people below them.

Edward Countryman believes that scholars have not ignored the South. He asked how scholars could ignore it when the South produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others of their ilk. However, historians do not know enough about the enslaved in the south and they need to investigate these faceless and obscure people in more detail.

Question: What do you think a new interpretation of the Revolution would look like with slavery at its center? What are the implications of this new slavery-centered narrative for the Revolutionary narrative of the New England and Middle Colonies?

Spooner answered that scholars have to center the story of slavery and the Revolution in the south because the South centered on slavery.

Rosenblithe offered that any re-framing of the narrative must look at the whole imperial system, where scholars will find that New England’s revolution was tied to the West Indies.

Tomorrow: Recap of the Concluding Roundtable

Congratulations! You are almost there, just one recap post left.

Feel free to agree or engage with the points and questions raised in this conference by leaving a comment.

*Please note that I updated the summary of Mark Boonshoft's comments. June 9, 2013 @ 11:28am.

The American Revolution Reborn: Violence and the Revolution Recap

Welcome to Part 4 of my Revolution Reborn Conference Recap. (See Part 1: Opening Roundtable Part 2: Global Perspectives Part 3: The Revolution as Civil War.)

Violence and the Revolution

Panelists

Chair: Michael Zuckerman

Zara Anishanslin, “‘This is the Skin of a Whit Man’: Visual Memory and the Materiality of Violence in the American Revolution”

Denver Brunsman, “‘Executioners of their Friends and Brethren’: Naval Impressment as an Atlantic Civil War”

David Hsiung, “Environmental History and the Revolution: Gunpowder as a Test Case”

Biggest Takeaway: The American Revolution is a compelling story that never goes away. However, scholars need to find ways to work the violence of the Revolutionary War into their narratives.

Biggest Question: How can historians get at and understand the violence of the American Revolution?

Pannel Summary

Anishanslin urged historians to grapple with how colonists experienced, saw, and witnessed the Revolution. Anishanslin believes that material culture offers the best way to understand and interpret the violence of the war; most Americans get their history from historic sites not archives. Americans will better understand that the War for Independence was a bloody, violent civil war if historians and museums can discuss how material culture contains the violence of the war.

Brunsman found that the British Royal Navy impressed tens of thousands of men and yet experienced a low rate of desertion: 7% during the Napoleonic wars. Impressed men stayed in the Navy because of naval discipline, the danger of the high seas, and the fact that sailors took pride in their work. However, the American Revolution caused desertion rates to double to 14%; most sailors deserted within the first year of their service. Brunsman attributed higher desertion rates to longer periods in American ports & ideology; sailors did not want to fight their American brethren.

Hsiung suggested how scholars might use environmental history perspectives to study the American Revolution. Ecologists discuss edge zones: transition zones between habitats, such as forests and fields, where sunlight, moisture, wind speed, and other variables differ from those in a habitat. Several animals thrive in edge zones, like raccoons. Hsiung proposed that historians use the concept of edge zones to study patriots, loyalists, & neutrals. Did communities have patriots, neutrals, or loyalists who thrived in the edge zones of loyalty? A place where they comfortably interacted with people of different loyalties.

Official Commentary

Margaretta Lovell

Marcus Rediker

Peter Thompson

Lovell discussed how material culture can provide evidence that can teach scholars something significant when the written record is silent or ambiguous. Artists such as John Singleton Copley & John Trumbull were not more ideologically confused or more financially conspicuous than other craftsmen, but they had chameleon loyalties because of their art. Copley painted portraits of loyalists during the war and Trumbull homage to American victories. Artists helped to fix the public memory of the Revolution and its cast of characters.

Rediker counseled that historians face 2 dilemmas as they re-birth scholarship on the American Revolution: 1. If 60% of the people in the Revolution were disaffected and 20% were loyalists, scholars need to analyze and understand how the patriots achieved their wildly improbable victory. 2. When the new narrative of the American Revolution emerges it will prove completely unacceptable to the political majority of the United States because the new narratives will be insufficiently patriotic.

Thompson views academic historians as a suburban bunch who possess the colossal arrogance to say that they know about the violence involved in the Revolution. An outlier of this false consciousness is the untested conviction that successful revolutions need internal enemies. Historians don’t have a handle on why the Revolution was so violent and they need to grapple with that question. Thompson also advocated that scholars revisit the terminology they use when they describe violence.

Sampling of Question & Answer Remarks

Aaron Fogleman reminded attendees that America was a violent society and that early Americans were used to warfare, slavery, & other types of violence before the Revolution brought intense civil war.

Judith Van Buskirk asked how 20% of the population made a Revolution. She would like to see more work done on power and how people exercised power during the Revolution. Van Buskirk also mentioned types of power: coercion, persuasion, manipulation, and the imposition of norms on a community.

William Pencak suggested that lack of opportunity caused the Revolution. People could not find opportunities out west because the British shut off access beyond the Appalachian mountains. The British Navy also controlled the sea lanes, which blocked Americans from achieving full access to the opportunities of the sea.

Thompson: Remorse. A study of regret in the Revolution would make a good dissertation topic.

Tomorrow: Recap of the Power and Revolution panel

Please leave a comment if you would like to engage with the points and questions raised by this conference.

The American Revolution Reborn: The Revolution as Civil War Recap

Part 3 of my Revolution Reborn Conference Recap. (See Part 1: Opening Roundtable & Part 2: Global Perspectives)

Revolution as Civil War

Chair: Barbara Oberg

Panelists:

Travis Glasson, "Intimacies of Occupation: Fraternization, Compromise, and Betrayal in Revolutionary-era Newport"

Michael McDonnell, “The Other Three Fifths: Neutrals in the American Revolution”

Kimberly Nath, “Loyalism, Citizenship, American Identity: The Shoemaker Family”

Aaron Sullivan (Ph.D. Candidate, Temple University), “In but not of the Revolution: Neutrals and British-Occupied Philadelphia”

Biggest Takeaway: Historians need to get at how civilians experienced the Revolutionary War. They also need to include the largest demographic in their war narratives: the Disaffected.

Biggest Question: How can scholars get at the civilian and disaffected experience?

Panel Summary

Glasson would like to know more about the civilian experience during the Revolutionary War. In Newport, R.I., civilians lived alongside several thousand British and Hessian troops for 3 years and among several thousand French troops prior to Yorktown. Civilians and soldiers befriended each other, offended each other, & formed grudges against each other. Newport had a lot of people who did not fit neatly into the patriot or loyalist camps. Scholars need to place more emphasis on the people in the middle, the disaffected and show how people’s political opinions changed throughout the war.

McDonnell sees the Revolutionary War as a civil war. Historians generally leave loyalists, Native Americans, African-Americans, and other opponents of the patriots out of their Revolutionary War narratives. They also leave out Americans who tried to take a middle path. Invariably divisions among Americans prolonged the war. The war and disaffection gave rise to new divisions between the states and between state and continental officials who felt that they had given more than others to the war. The Revolutionary War heightened localism rather than nationalism.

Nath studied the Shoemaker Family of Philadelphia to illuminate the loyalist experience during the war and what happened to those who returned home after the war. She argued that American citizenship came to be defined by what it was not rather than what it was. Citizens were not loyalists.

Sullivan believes that contemporaries and later scholars left the disaffected out of their narratives because disaffection comprises a tough rallying cry. The disaffected outnumbered the patriots. Sullivan also noted the intolerance of the disaffected towards the Revolution; the patriots angered the disaffected by making participation in the Revolution mandatory.

Official Commentary

Li Jianming (Peking University)

Marjoleine Kars

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich  

Jianming observed that any revolution is a civil war. However, the American Revolution stands as a peculiar one because it occurred in both North America and the British Isles. Ordinary people did not always leave good records and a paucity of sources might cause historians to say more than they should about their experiences. Scholars need to be careful not to lump ordinary people in with the elite as they stood as antagonistic groups during the Revolution.

Kars reflected on how scholars know more about revolutionary leaders than about ordinary revolutionaries. The same stands true of slave rebellions, especially the one in Haiti. Many runaway slaves hid from rebels and masters alike during the slave rebellion in Berbice. Such evidence suggests that we need to look at the motivations and ideology of slaves. We need to write narratives that focus on the effects of revolution on the local community, not on the rhetoric of liberty.

Ulrich discussed how Americans look upon the Revolution as a positive term because “revolution” means a life cycle; a revolution might be something Americans want to experience again. “Civil war” denotes something negative and ugly. Americans don’t want to repeat civil wars. The American Revolution was a destructive civil war. People lost the things they cared about most during the war: people & property.

Sampling of Question & Answer Remarks

Thomas Slaughter: The biggest problem facing scholars: as messy as the American Revolution was its settlement was stunningly peaceful. Scholars need to answer why that came about.

Sullivan: When we look at the Revolution today, we focus on the group of people caught in the middle. We talk about refugees & the victims of war. A new narrative of the American Revolution might look more like how we describe present-day revolutions in places like Syria.

Brendan McConville: Neutralism may have meant more than “I don’t want to get shot at or die.” Neutralism may have a positive ideological nature that we just can’t get at.

Tomorrow: Recap of the Violence and the American Revolution panel

Feel free to agree or engage with the points and questions raised in this conference by leaving a comment.