Bringing Campus and Community Together: Doing Public History at Longwood College

Abstract

PUBLIC HISTORY encompasses many fields of study--historic preservation, archival management, museum work, editing, archaeology, genealogy, public administration of historic resources-and is one of the fastest growing areas of departmental curriculum development on college and university campuses. Programs in public history are designed to produce graduates who wish to work in history-related occupations outside of teaching. However, many students in history pursuing secondary school teaching certification elect to undertake courses in public history for the valuable hands-on learning experiences they provide, ideas and techniques for them to use in their future classrooms. The purpose of this essay is to describe our approach to public history at Longwood College, and to offer some ideas and materials to assist our colleagues at other institutions who may wish to develop public history concentrations within the history major, or simply use some of the pedagogy of public history to enhance existing United States history courses. Most especially, we wish to emphasize the ways in which public history can be used to reach out to the community, to breach the traditional walls between town and gown and bring all those-interested in history together. Longwood College is one of the state colleges of Virginia, located in an area commonly called the Southside, referring to the region south of