In Quest of the Professional Historian: The Introduction to Public History Course

Abstract

Patricia Mooney Melvin, head of public history at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, and faculty member at the NEH-NCPH Summer Institute on Public History, surveys the growing literature on public history and gives practical suggestions for conceptualizing and setting up an introductory, semester-length course for graduate students in public history. She critically evaluates articles, books, and reports that will help introduce students to a new professional world rarely found in courses in the standard curriculum. Melvin's suggestions can be utilized both as selected readings for students and also as background reading for faculty approaching public history for the first time; here one can find the main streams of thought, issues, and questions that have emerged during the past decade. BYITS VERY NATURE the Introduction to Public History course can be an unwieldy beast. In designing the course, one is confronted with the desire to illustrate the wide range of possibilities open to those possessing a history background and with the danger that such a course can turn into a laundry list devoid of a strong intellectual context. One way to resolve this dilemma is to utilize the history of the historical profession in America as a unifying structure for the course. With this approach, students begin to understand how the profession has developed over time and how the different areas of public history fit into the historical profession as a whole. This allows them to focus their thoughts directly on the issue of the historian as a professional rather than on the historian as a teacher, an archivist, a curator, a cultural resource manager, or a government employee. A review of the recent guide to public history education in America' and a survey of the syllabi included in the National Council on Public History's syllabus exchange suggests that most courses that introduce students to public history are one-semester courses open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The course under examination here is designed for one semester and is intended for graduate students. Given 1. National Council on Public History, Public Education in America: A Guide (1986).