Courses in public history aim to support students in thinking critically about the ethics and politics of history—both the structures of power that shape what gets remembered and the ethical and methodological challenges of working with communities to preserve and reflect on their own histories. Students will also learn new methods in engaging with the past, including, but not limited to, curating digital and physical exhibitions, conducting oral histories, and developing interactive digital maps, as well as learning about archival and preservation practices.

Learning Objectives

1. History and Power: Students will learn to recognize and examine how historical knowledge production and erasure have been shaped by underlying social and political dynamics, through structures of state power as well as marginalization and oppression rooted in race, ethnicity, citizenship, class, gender, sexuality, and disability.
2. Memory, Identity, and Belonging: Students will learn to think critically about the ways individuals and communities remember and forget the past—how personal and collective understandings of identity and belonging are constructed through acts and sites of memory, or their absence.
3. Modes of Commemoration, Preservation, and Storytelling: Students will examine the forms and methods through which historical knowledge is preserved and shared, including monuments, memorials, historic preservation, museums, archives and libraries, film and media, genealogy, digital history, oral history, literature and performance, as well as vernacular practices of family and community memory.
4. Public History in Practice: Students will learn and put into practice methods in public history and public humanities, including digital or physical exhibitions, oral history interviews, social media-based digital projects, documentary films, podcasts, interactive digital maps or timelines, and community-based historical learning.

Learn more about the undergraduate minor in Public History.