Some Thoughts on Defining, Evaluating, and Rewarding Public Scholarship

Abstract

LIKE MOST OTHER HISTORIANS who attended graduate school during the 1970s and early 1980s, I received my training in a program that explicitly and implicitly instructed me in the academy's division of labor among research, teaching, and service. I do not ever remember as a graduate student talking about audiences for history, probably because by common, unspoken agreement we all understood the form that our scholarship would take and the audience to whom it would be directed. Most of us learned about teaching by watching our professors or by working as teaching assistants, with varying levels of supervision. As for service, I knew about committees. After graduation, when my career began to move in the direction of public history, I did not initially give much thought to the fit with the traditional academic reward system. I should have; and I was not alone.