Get your popcorn ready! The Massachusetts Historical Society has published videos of the keynote addresses given at the "'So Sudden an Alteration': The Causes, Course, and Consequences of the American Revolution" conference.
Woody Holton offered the first keynote address on the originality crisis in American Revolution Studies.
Brendan McConville gave the second keynote address, "The Great Cycle: The Professional Study of the American Revolution, 1960-2015."
How can historians solve the disconnect between the scholarship we produce and the world outside of museums and universities?
How can we help non-specialists connect with the past in a way that makes it relevant to their present?
On Thursday, April 16, 2015, the National Council on Public History offered “History Communicators," a conference panel with an idea that may help the historical profession better connect with and serve the needs of society.
In this post, you will discover what “history communicators” are, where the idea came from, and thoughts about how the historical profession might integrate this new breed of historian into the profession.
The idea for history communicators originated with Jason Steinhauer.
Steinhauer works as a program specialist at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. The Kluge Center strives to “bring together scholars and researchers from around the world to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources, and to interact with policymakers and the public.”
Steinhauer’s position has allowed him to interact with scholars from many different fields. This interdisciplinary experience introduced him to “science communicators,” a position that he would like to see historians adopt.
Across the disciplines of science, scientists realized that to attract funding for their work they needed to keep lawmakers, university trustees, and the public informed about how their research would better society.
Scientists recognized that the demands of lab research and university teaching prevented many researchers from discussing their investigations with those who might fund them. They also found that many researchers lacked the ability to discuss their work in a way that lawmakers, taxpayers, and university trustees could understand. The profession solved this problem by creating a new kind of scientist: A Science Communicator.
Science communicators hold Ph.D.s in science, have lab experience, and they possess the communication skills necessary to write and speak about scientific research in a way that those who might fund it can understand.
Science communicators have increased interest in and funding for scientific research by helping non-scientists grasp how scientific work and study betters their lives and improves the world. It is in large part because of the work of science communicators that the idea of STEM and its funding has taken off.
The addition of science communicators to the scientific profession has been so successful that institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created programs to train more science communicators.
Astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Janna Levin work as science communicators.
Steinhauer believes that we (historians and historical organizations) should adopt and apply the science communicator model to our discpline. He advocates that we create a new type of professional historian: The History Communicator.
Steinhauer notes that historians will not be able to return history to its once prominent position in the public mind unless the profession adapts to the 21st-century job market.
Today, universities and colleges demand that history professors assume heavy teaching loads, service requirements, and work in a “publish or perish” atmosphere. These job requirements, combined with little-to-no compensation for public outreach, have created a situation where academic historians have neither the time nor motivation to interact with and help the public connect with their scholarship.
Furthermore, Steinhauer opines that academic historians should not be responsible for communicating their ideas to non-specialists: “To produce new, sharp scholarship requires tremendous time and research…Historians, then, should not also be responsible for promoting and explaining the significance of their scholarship to the public.” Instead, academic historians should be able to “focus on conducting deep research, writing, publishing, teaching and working toward tenure—all of which America needs."
If communicating the ideas of history and its relevance to the present should not fall to academic historians, whose responsibility is it?
This is where the idea of history communicators comes in.
According to Steinhauer, the “complex and political task of bringing historical research out of the scholarly communication cycle and into the mainstream requires a unique set of skills that must be cultivated, practiced, and applied across a wide range of media now available.”
Given the large time commitment that this work requires, Steinhauer would like to see the profession create and fund the role of history communicator, a “new class” of historian that will “operate on the edge and intersection of new historical scholarship and the constantly-evolving world of communicating to the public in order to keep history relevant in the 21st century.”
For Steinhauer, to be a history communicator means to be part digital humanist, content strategist, marketer, blogger, journalist, lobbyist, and historian.
Steinhauer presented his idea for history communicators at the 2015 NCPH annual meeting with Julie Golia (Brooklyn Historical Society), Nicole Hemmer (US News & World Report), and Rebecca Onion (Slate).
Steinhauer began the conversation by explaining how he came up with the idea for history communicators, the work he saw these historical professionals doing, and how public historians stood poised to pioneer the profession.
Steinhauer reiterated his view that the role of academic historians should be to produce scholarship and train students how to read primary sources, skills critical for history communicators. He also admitted that well-trained, academic historians would need to let go of their ideas of the exclusivity of the profession for history communicators to successfully perform their job.
Golia, Hemmer, and Onion served as examples of history communicators and offered insight into the types of work they do to better connect society with its past. All three work as journalists and public history professionals.
When the floor opened for comment, several public historians raised questions about where funding would come from for this type of work and where history communicators would fit into the profession. Their commentary raised the important point that funding cuts have impacted public history sites as much as, or more than, college and university departments. As a result, many public historians also do not have time to interact with the public.
To get a feel for the conversation prompted by this panel, check out “History Communicators is Launched.”
Thoughts and IdeasI am a fan of Steinhauer’s idea: history needs history communicators.
With that said, I see three issues we need to tackle before we can create (officially) and integrate this new position into the historical profession.
First, we must solve the problem of where history communicators fit into the profession and who will pay them for their work.
It seems to me that nearly every professional historian agrees with the idea that historians need to interact with the public more. The majority of us understand that if we can restore history to the forefront of the public mind then we can fix, or at least lessen, our funding and enrollment problems. With that said, I do not see many colleges, universities, or public history organizations advertising positions for history communicators.
History communication is a job that everyone wants done, but wants someone else to pay for and do.
My passion for both producing serious historical scholarship and communicating it to the public has placed me in “professional historian limbo.” My academic and public colleagues admire and respect my work, but their university and organizational departments have no place for me or other history communicators. Therefore, many of us work without institutional or financial support.
Second, we need to find an approach that allows all historians to practice history communication.
I disagree with Steinhauer's notion that academic historians shouldn’t be history communicators.
We shouldn't limit history communicators to historians of any specific historical background. The position of history communicator should be open to any professional historian who has the inclination to convey serious scholarship to the public.
Academically-trained historians are in many cases the best equipped historians to be history communicators because they know primary sources, know how they relate to the historiography, and how that historiography relates to the present. It would be best for the discipline if we could find a way to allow their active participation.
Third, we need to develop and integrate training that will enable history communicators to succeed.
We need to find space in our graduate, and possibly undergraduate, programs to add communication, technology, and marketing courses.
History communicators need to know not only history, but how to communicate, market, and place history into our technology-filled world.
We need to add training in writing, marketing, journalism, social media, blogging, podcasting, internet video production, app development, website creation, and, in the near future, virtual reality software to our student curriculums. I know this seems easier said than done.
Steinhauer has presented us with a great idea.
History communicators promises historians a way to return history to the forefront of public consciousness. This accomplishment would not only improve our society, but it may also alleviate our funding and enrollment problems.
Get InvolvedOn Wednesday, May 13 at 7pm EST, historians interested in history communication and adding history communicators to the profession will gather on Twitter to share ideas.
You can participate by following the hashtag: #histcomm.
*For more on history communicators, see Steinhauer and James Grossman’s “Historians and Public Culture: Widening the Circle of Advocacy."
Have you ever stepped outside of your professional comfort zone by attending a new conference or event?
Between April 15 and 18, 2015, I tried something new: I attended my first annual meeting of the National Council on Public History. The meeting took place in Nashville, Tennessee.
In this post, you will discover what makes the NCPH annual meeting similar to and yet different from traditional academic history conferences and how the conference demonstrates public history as a specialty.
The 2015 NCPH annual meeting met to “consider the edges of what we do and who we are” as public historians.
Panels explored the future of public history, how the field can collaborate with other disciplines and interact with new audiences, and how public historians can contribute to “the cutting edge questions of our societies."
(2015 NCPH Annual Meeting Program)
I chose to attend NCPH instead of OAH because as a hybrid historian, I live with one foot in academic history and one foot in public history, and yet I had never attended a public history conference.
In 2014, I watched as my Twitter stream filled with interesting tweets about NCPH sessions and about how much fun my colleagues were having at the conference, so I made a commitment to attend my first NCPH annual meeting in 2015.
Over the course of the 3-day conference, I could not help but compare my NCPH experience with my participation in numerous AHA, OAH, SHEAR, and OIEAHC conferences. My mind made three important observations about the differences between these experiences and about the historical profession.
The NCPH defines public history as “the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world.” Some know public history as “applied history” as the profession seeks to apply history to real world issues.
By those definitions, I qualify as a public historian.
I claim to be part public historian because I spend a good portion of my time trying to help non-historians form a meaningful connection with history. I perform this work by writing articles, podcasting, tweeting, and leading occasional tours of revolutionary Boston.
Although I qualify as a public historian professionally, I felt a bit out of my element at NCPH.
As I attended panels and conversed with colleagues, I came to understand that professionally-trained public historians have specialized skills that many university or research-driven historians overlook.
Public historians often work with and produce a different type of scholarship from those of us who trained as academics. They study, create, and apply theories of historical interpretation when they consider how to create exhibits and convey information to the public.
Sessions on project management and how to include and interpret women at historic sites offered a glimpse of how public historians create exhibits and interpretive programs. This process involves more than just determining what historical facts to include or omit. It involves a careful consideration of audience, perspective, organization mission statements, funding, exhibit space, and the consideration and application of theories for how to convey information to visitors through print, visuals, and tech devices.
Anyone who thinks that public history makes a great “Plan B” for graduate students who train as academic historians should attend NCPH. Once they take part in a few sessions and interact with their public history colleagues they will realize that public historians work on history, but in a different way from academics.
Public historians grapple with a different set of scholarly issues that most academic programs don’t expose their graduate students to. If academic programs want to make public history a viable “Plan B” for their graduates, then they need to collaborate with public history programs to offer training in the skillsets required by the public history profession.
Public historians face many of the same or similar problems that academic historians face: Lack of funding, inadequate institutional resources or support, and insufficient compensation for interacting with the public.
Additionally, both academic and public historians grapple with interpretive questions that each specialty could help the other answer.
In a session about how to include and interpret women in historical sites and museum exhibits, someone raised the question about how public historians can overcome the lack of women’s voices in the historical record. Academic historians receive training in how to look at and use what the historical record does not say.
Conversely, some of the techniques that public historians use to interpret history could be of real value to academic historians.
As I mentioned in “Wanted: 21st-Century History Job,” the future of the field lies in collaboration and in the development of more hybrid historians. Together academic and public historians can cultivate wide public awareness about the past and convey history in a way that makes it as relevant to the present.
I won’t lie, I was nervous about attending NCPH.
Part of what I love about attending conferences is catching up with friends. I knew I would know a few attendees from Twitter, but the majority of my professional network and historian friends do not attend NCPH.
My fears of being unwelcome or lonely disappeared within the first 15 minutes of the conference. The first person I met introduced herself and we became fast friends.
Most NCPH attendees were very welcoming. They wanted to be at NCPH and they wanted to interact with and meet new people.
In fact, the public historians I met seemed more concerned with meeting me as a person rather than me as an historian. We met each other as people before we delved into professional chit-chat about where we worked and what areas of history interested us. This type of interaction happened throughout the conference.
Additionally, NCPH encourages attendees to visit the host city. They build walking and museum tours into the conference program; participating in a tour counts as attending a conference session.
I am famous for attending history conferences and never visiting the sites around me because I am so focused on the conference program. I would have done the same at NCPH, but the program encouraged me to have fun and consider history and history conversations outside of the conference hotel. Tours also allowed me to meet and meaningfully network with more people during these shared experiences.
NCPH is a fun conference and one that every historian should make a point to attend.
NCPH will introduce you to a welcoming group of historians and their professional work.
I plan to attend NCPH every two or three years. This periodic attendance will help me stay abreast of what my public historian colleagues are up to, what challenges they face, and where opportunities exist for collaboration between academically-trained and public historians.
Share Your StoryHave you ever attended NCPH? What was your experience like?
What is the most fun history conference you attend?
On April 9, 2015, the Massachusetts Historical Society convened “‘So Sudden an Alteration’: The Causes, Course, and Consequences of the American Revolution,” a conference to discuss the present state of scholarship on the American Revolution.
The conference marked the second in a three-part series aimed at reigniting interest and work on the American Revolution. (The first conference, Revolution Reborn, took place in June 2013.)
Over two and half days, conference-goers attended nine sessions that explored new scholarship centered on the American Revolution. They also listened to two keynote addresses that lamented the state of the field and its lack of “originality.”
In this post, you will discover a recap of some of the new scholarship on the American Revolution, the two keynote addresses, and my take on whether or not the field suffers from an “originality crisis."
‘So Sudden an Alteration’ offered attendees the opportunity to attend seven of nine sessions that previewed the works-in-progress of approximately twenty-eight historians of the American Revolution.
The sessions included new work on the Stamp Act crisis, the Boston Massacre, slavery, the War for Independence, revolutionary settlements, and the global nature of the Revolution.
Below you will find brief summaries of the work offered at three panels to give you a feel for the scholarship discussed.
The conference opened with a look at the Stamp Act.
Nancy Siegel explored the imagery of the Stamp Act crisis and the subsequent discord between Great Britain and her thirteen North American colonies. She noted how printmakers employed a satirical mother and daughter motif in their images—printers often portrayed North America as a bare-breasted Native American female warrior— and explored how those images changed over time. Siegel noted that visual satire allowed Britons to express and discuss their views on the imperial crisis as it unfolded.
Craig Smith examined the Stamp Act from the angle of honor. He argues that the colonists had a strong sense of honor—reputation based on an individual’s proper conduct—and that the passage of the Stamp Act violated it. Parliament challenged the colonists' honor by implying that like deadbeats, the colonists would not contribute to the well being of the empire without legislation. Furthermore, by passing the Stamp Act without their consent, Parliament relegated the colonists to a slave-like status; slaves did not have honor because they lacked both freedom and independence.
Richard D. Brown commented that both papers serve as a “launching point” for a discussion of American identity creation. They also offer interesting examples of how we might use gender and culture as lenses to view the events of the American Revolution.
What caused the thirteen British North American colonies to split from Great Britain?
Christopher P. Magra, John G. McCurdy, and David Preston shared their insight by exploring press gangs, the Quartering Act, and the loss of British preferment experienced by British officer-turned-Patriot Charles Lee. Christopher P. Magra seeks to revive the economic origins of the American Revolution with his study of British Naval impressment. Magra argues that scholars have turned away from the economic origins of the American Revolution because they believe that the colonists cared more about how Parliament passed taxes (without their consent) than they did about the economic burdens the taxes imposed. Magra seeks to move the economic origins back near the center of what caused the American Revolution by examining the economic hardships experienced by Rhode Islanders as a result of British naval impressment in 1765.
John G. McCurdy promises to resurrect the Quartering Act. Historians have claimed that the Quartering Act would have allowed the British government to billet soldiers in the colonists’ private homes. McCurdy’s findings reveal that Parliament had no such intentions. They also disclose how historians can use the Quartering Act and the debates surrounding it to see Parliament’s insufficient knowledge of its colonies and the colonists’ developing interest in a right to privacy.
David Preston has embarked on a project that explores why the American Revolution did “not disintegrate into endless civil war, political retribution and violence or into a military dictatorship or monarchy, as have many other revolutions in world history.” His paper, “Loyalty and Subjectivity in the Postwar British Empire: The Strange Career of Charles Lee” offers insight into the human dimensions of the American Revolution and War for Independence by investigating how Charles Lee grappled with the questions of loyalty and identity. For Lee, and most Americans, decisions of loyalty and national identity were fraught with emotion, an aspect that historians have often erased because they assume that American independence occurred naturally and inevitably.
Robert A. Gross remarked that impressment, quartering, and Charles Lee's loss of preferment all played a role in why Americans decided to break with Great Britain. He noted that many historians portray the American Revolution as inevitable, but that Magra, McCurdy, and Preston have reintroduced contingency to our understanding of the American Revoltion; the period 1765-1775 did not witness a march to the Revolution, events could have turned out differently.
What was the legacy of the American Revolution and how did Americans who lived through it remember and interpret the event? New scholarship by Mathew Rainbow Hale, Kariann Yokota, and Dane Morrision seeks answers to these questions.
Mathew Rainbow Hale compares the American Revolution with the French Revolution to measure the revolutionary nature of the former. He argues that this comparison allows historians to better understand the contours and parameters of the impact of the American Revolution. Hale’s initial findings suggest that historians of the American Revolution need to reevaluate how they use and view the ideas of democracy and equality. Hale asserts that the French Revolution and its events shaped the way Americans viewed their revolution and its mission to bring forth democracy and equality.
Kariann Yokota would like scholars to consider how early Americans’ interactions and activities in the Pacific Ocean shaped the development of the British North American colonies and fledgling United States. Yokota observes that as Americans sought independence, Europeans sought to expand their involvement in the Pacific. After the War for Independence, Americans followed the Europeans’ lead and ventured into the region as an opportunity to assist with the growth of their new nation and to demonste their new found freedom. Yokota has found that American activies in the Pacific contributed to the economic, political, and cultural development of the United States.
Dane Morrison’s work also focuses on Americans in the Pacific. Morrison would like to know how the first generation of American traders in the Pacific viewed their American identity and how their interactions with different Pacific Rim peoples affected their portrayal of the American Revolution and its ideas. Morrison seeks answers in the Indies trade literature that emerged during the early republic period, a literature that reflects that early Americans viewed their initial forays into the Pacific as an extension of the American Revolution.
Eliga Gould commented that Hale, Yokota, and Morrison's work reveal how situating the American Revolution into global history can offer insight into the Revolution and how its ideas spread and took shape both during and after the War for Independence. Hale’s investigation reminds us that the French served as the midwives of American democracy. Morrison’s study demonstrates that Americans sought recognition as Americans and when Europeans failed to provide the desired recognition, they traveled to China to get it. Finally, Yokota’s research reminds historians that the United States began thinking about transcontinental concerns only after Americans ventured into the Pacific.
Woody Holton and Brendan McConville offered the two keynote addresses of the conference. Both scholars used their opportunity to lament how study of the American Revolution has waned over the last 25 years.
Holton asserted that historians of the American Revolution are suffering from an “originality crisis.” For the last 10-25 years, historians have created new work on the American Revolution by taking old ideas, adding the theories set forth by their favorite theorist (Foucault/Bourdieu/Habermas), and calling it "new work." According to Holton, applying theory to old ideas does not create new ideas or new work. Instead, it generates jargon-filled scholarship that people can’t read.
Holton offered three ideas for where scholars of the American Revolution might find new topics: The influence of ordinary people on extraordinary events, micro-comparisons, and statistical studies.
Holton posited that historians would need time to accomplish this work and overcome their “originality crisis.” Time to create “tedious" databases that will yield fascinating insight into the American Revolution. Time to learn Mandarin so we can learn how eighteenth-century Chinese people viewed Americans and their Revolution. Time to produce well thought out, quality studies.
Holton advised the audience to create time by doing away with “quickie dissertations” and by attending fewer conferences.
Brendan McConville agreed with Holton’s sentiment of an “originality crisis.” His talk began with a brief overview of how we came to this crisis: over the last 25 years scholarship has shifted the discussion away from the American Revolution and toward a study of revolutionary America and the failed promises of the Revolution.
Unlike Holton, McConville did not offer any suggestions for how scholars might find new opportunities and ideas as they return their focus to the American Revolution and War for Independence.
Although Holton and McConville offered dire views for the field and its originality, the conference papers suggest historians should be optimistic.
The proffered papers reflect that historians still have a deep interest in the American Revolution and that they want to better understand it by revisiting and reexamining long-neglected events and by situating the Revolution in a global context.
I agree with McConville’s sentiment that historians need to better define what we mean by the American Revolution. Do we mean revolutionary America or the American Revolution, the event? Personally, I believe the Revolution as an event took place between 1763 and 1797 (the end of Washington’s presidency).
Although I would like to see us better define and articulate what we mean by the American Revolution, it would be unwise for historians to disconnect the event from its context. History is often as much about continuity as is it is about change. In fact, understanding the continuities in an event such as the American Revolution will help us better understand the change the event offered and brought forth.
I think the best studies of the American Revolution will be those that focus on the event while placing it within its context; studies that discuss the event while also showing what preceded and succeeded it. The challenge will be fighting the urge to portray the American Revolution and independence as inevitable. We must show that contingency existed and that the events of the Revolution and its War for Independence could have turned out differently.
I left “So Sudden an Alteration” feeling optimistic and energized about the field and my scholarship. I do not see a crisis, but then again I believe that each generation has something new to say about the past.
No matter how hard we try to study the past on its own terms the present day will always creep in. The present almost always informs our scholarly interests and lines of inquiry.
Scholars who witnessed the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s have and still offer wonderful work about the social upheaval that took place during the American Revolution and about how the promises of the Revolution failed to include women, African-American slaves, and the poor—groups that worked to gain inclusion during the 1960s and 1970s.
My fascination with regionalism and American identity stem from the fact that I have witnessed a growing polarization in the politics of the United States. This polarization has occurred as much along regional lines as ideological ones.
Furthermore, I am not sure if historians can ever really enter into an “originality crisis.” The present always offers us new lines of inquiry. The papers offered at the conference clearly demonstrate this point even if the keynote speakers disagree.
What Do You Think?What do you think about the future of the study of the American Revolution?
Do you think the field suffers from an originality crisis?
*Joe Adelman and Michael Hattem have also posted their impressions of this conference.
Last week, Michael Hattem of The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History interviewed me about Ben Franklin's World and my alternate career path.
Here's an excerpt:
JUNTO: What is your academic/historical background?
LIZ COVART: My historical background consists of training in both academic and public history. In terms of my academic training, I worked with William Pencak and Amy Greenberg as an undergraduate at the Pennsylvania State University. In graduate school, I honed my historical research, writing, and thinking skills with Alan Taylor at the University of California, Davis. My initial training in public history began at Boston National Historical Park where I worked as a seasonal interpretive ranger for five seasons. The wonderful experience I had interacting with the public has prompted me to seek out internships and volunteer opportunities with historical societies since 2007.
JUNTO: Can you tell us a bit about your post-PhD, alt-ac experience?
LC: My post-PhD experience has been one of experimentation. About three years before I graduated I started having doubts about whether the “traditional” tenure-track career path was the path for me. I wanted a job that combined serious historical research, with the public history goal of helping people connect with their past. Since 2012, I have explored numerous opportunities in academic and public history. Today, I work as an independent scholar. I am fashioning a career as a hybrid academic-public historian, a position that represents the not-so-distant future of the historical profession. This hybrid position involves historical research and writing, collaboration between academic and public historians, opportunities to experiment with conveying history through new media, and chances to interact with colleagues and non-specialists at conferences and events.
