What is Public History?

            I have struggled myself to define Public History as a methodology.  The National Council on Public History’s website grapples with this issue.  I agree most with Mary Rizzo’s definition: that Public History is interdisciplinary and the goal is to “make scholarly research accessible to the public.”  She also mentions that public history should spark thinking about power/causation in our own communities.  The ultimate conclusion from this H-Net forum accepted that the definition is open and fluid, and should be without limiting boundaries.  The readings touched upon a concern I have also dealt with when dealing with making history accessible to public audiences: mainly the position of public historians in academia.  A phrase that continually turned up was this sense of being an ‘in-between academic.’  Making academia’s complicated theories and interpretations understandable to the general public seems like a position of mediator.  Hence the ‘in-between’ feeling. 

            The article by Corbett and Miller on shared inquiry reiterated what the other readings mention about public history being situational, and how this field has a special challenge to adapt the unique demands of the materials/community by sharing interpretive authority.  The example of the Filipino community’s participation in an exhibit on the St. Louis World Fair and how one controversial photograph of dog eating led to a breakdown of the collaborative relationship between the curators and the Filipinos.  The bottom line of interpretive power stayed with the curators, even though their was a negotiation that ended in the removal of the photo from the exhibit.  The “shared” part of inquiry leads to a questioning of how “shared” it really is when public historians are supported in part by the establishment of traditional historical institutions.  Public historians have more power in deciding the final inclusion/exclusion of interpretations and material representations.  The only real area in which public historians do not have more agency compared to non-professionals is in oral history.  Historians are dependent on the information interviewees are willing to provide, although the historian has some power over how the interview will contribute to public history projects. 

            The readings for this week focused on the challenge of defining public history and developing a valid methodology.  In-between historians mediate the research from historical institutions into publicly accessible interpretations.  The biggest hurdle for translating research is not the translation into the vernacular, but tailoring the information for public acceptance and interest.  Bridging the vocabulary is rather easy compared to adjusting the interpretation according to public wants and needs.  Public history is useless unless the public can appreciate the history in the context of their own experience.  As Greg Smoak said, “Public history is history plus.”