Dealing Ourselves Back in: Professional Historians and the Public

Abstract

IN MY YEARS (not yet finished) as an academy-based professional historymaker, I was never good at listening to or drawing out the audience about what they brought into the classroom in the way of history, either as to content or interpretation and use. As to what they took out, as to content and interpretation and use, all I had was the final exam or paper, and the hope-on which my choice of career was based-that the texts/ sources and I had taught some of them to think critically, and be good liberals. I never knew professor who was sufficiently concerned about the history in the heads and lives of the audience/public that she would do research on it, though few would give quizzes on the first day of class to determine baseline of ignorance against which to measure the professor's progress. Public historians, I later learned, are more interested in this topic, and do research on it-usually as entrance and/or exit polls at the doors of museums. Further, they acknowledge that historymaking is joint enterprise in its very essence, and that professionals must work out the means of what Michael Frisch taught us to call a shared authority with the public as community history is re-constructed. This leads inevitably to the need to know more about the public's engagement or non-engagement with history. Fortunately, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen took that research assignment to another level in The Presence of the Past, unique