Everyday Public History

Bibliographic Data

ID9877397
AuthorsHuw Halstead (0000-0002-8788-4325, University of St Andrews, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume107
Issue375
Pages235-248
Publication date2022-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2648 • E-ISSN: 1468-229X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-229x.13260
OpenAlexW4210865881
LanguageEN
Citations received3

Public history is often viewed rather narrowly as something that ‘happens’ in familiar places at particular moments in time under the watchful eye of a ‘professional’. This is the public history of the impact and engagement statement: bounded, controlled, measurable. Conversely, I argue for a more ecumenical, diverse and anarchic understanding of public history. Drawing on observations from oral history, participant observation and digital ethnography, I present public history as something that suffuses the everyday lives of historians and non‐historians alike as they continually construct their own histories through myriad sources and methodologies. This ‘everyday public history’ is diffuse, noisy, messy, often confusing, sometimes troubling; but never singular, straightforward or authoritative. By studying this everyday public history, historians gain a fuller understanding of the power of the past in society, a greater capacity to comprehend and challenge problematic historical narratives, and a more productive entanglement between their work and people's everyday lives

Aesthetics · Art · Construct (python library · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Everyday life · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Power (physics · Public history · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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