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Public History Mini Lecture 2024

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  1. hi everyone a very warm welcome to this mini lecture I'm Anna McGuire I'm lecturer in public history in the department and today I'm going to be
  2. talking to you about what public history is and why we should take it seriously in doing so I'm engaging with a classic genre of public history the
  3. lecture while you may think about the lecture as purely an educational tool it's also a form of public history one that has historically produced political
  4. gendered racialized and colonal power the lecture in Western history emerged from the oral performance of History a global phenomenon and grew to be
  5. associated with academic Authority the lecture is a performance and it involves interaction with the audience so your lectur is usually uh
  6. get up in a theater to try and inform educate and entertain as the historian Toby green has recently described in his own public lecture the process of
  7. Awakening in lecture is very important it is one of the things that a lecturer and a lecturer tries to do to awaken in an audience an awareness of the
  8. significance of the topic at hand so what I want to do in my lecture today is to awaken in you a new appreciation of public history and encourage you to take
  9. public history seriously it might have been the reason that you chose to study history at University through the horrible history
  10. books or playing Assassin's Creed it might be what your family talks about about now you've decided to do history whether that's the new David aloga
  11. documentary the museums that you visit while you're here at UCL or maybe all of your Christmas presents are now public history
  12. themed all of this is to say that you might think of public history as the extra stuff the historical activity that is happens around the edges of proper
  13. history done by proper historians like here at UCL but what I want to argue today is that the power of public history can be
  14. its levity its fun and its joy as part of its effective repertoire by which I mean its ability to generate and produce emotional responses in its ability to
  15. reach different audiences and communicate something about the past powerful in its very existence Beyond institutional borders and that's why
  16. historians of all stripes are paying more attention to public history and doing more public history and as future historians here's why you
  17. should be taking it seriously too Anna what is public history well as historians often like to say it's
  18. complicated for public history its complexity is mostly in its expansiveness it's a term which can cover all manner of things and that
  19. creates a challenge for those who practice research and importantly who teach in this field for our students who want to study public history it might be
  20. about supporting a path in the Heritage sector for others it's about willing history to make meaningful social and political change and for others still it
  21. might be so that they can contribute to Twitter debates about historical accuracy in Period dramas part of the way that I tend to
  22. make sense of this is thinking about public history as a practice and as a discipline so I Define it as a practice as any genre process Behavior or
  23. institution through which publics engage with contribute to produce or preserve historical understanding but there's also public
  24. history with a capital pH as a discipline or field of study much like social history or political history or cultural history public history is not
  25. just a practice but a theoretically Rich critical orientation about how we think about the past use in the present having sketched out what we mean
  26. by public history I now want to explore how and why we do it why do people create and consume public history what are its purposes and what is it
  27. for one place to begin thinking about public history is through genre the historian lmiller jordanova defines genre in public history as a type of
  28. representation whether in the form of words displays pictures or film that is governed by recognized literary artistic or institutional conventions like the
  29. novel The monograph the diarama or the local history lecture the concept remains useful despite the diversity within genres changing conventions and
  30. the emergence of new forms genres are flexible with intricate histories this is a notion of central importance for understanding public
  31. history because genres involve elements of convention they are recognized Often intuitively by audiences and readers as a result there are expectations on both
  32. sides that are in effect informal Rules of Engagement now I've already mentioned quite a few genres in the course of this
  33. lecture already but let's have a look at some more so we could think about public art uh like this
  34. video or video
  35. games to my dearest friends through the evil noise of
  36. artillery tanks Andes I remember our adventures it could be through historical fiction like the very popular
  37. series of books that are emerging around the Holocaust at the moment or thinking about comics and zenes like the suffragette one you see on the
  38. slide it could also be thinking in about walking tours and the occupation of public space about food or about rituals why are these genres important
  39. for us to think about as public historians we need to think about what genre is appropriate for the kind of story that we want to tell and what
  40. expectations that sets for our audience for instance is Tik Tok the best place for sharing traumatic veteran oral histories might be your immersive or the
  41. immersive experience of Oran augmented reality work best to transport your audience into a different andf familiar time
  42. period we also have to think about our own technical skills and capabilities and the budgets that we have to hand and about thinking about what best suits our
  43. audience genres help us to think about how history is produced and to think about the Rules of Engagement that sets this for audiences but there are other
  44. processes for making history that we can think about to extend our understanding of public history and I'm going to focus on just two here applying the past and
  45. playing with the past applying the past speaks to how historical sources and narratives are applied to create social and political
  46. change applied historians who have produced manifestos like the example on screen about history's utility argue that we should both we we should use
  47. both historical content and historical reasoning to clarify public and private challenges and choices one way of doing this is through
  48. history and policy history and policy is a nonprofit network of over 500 academic historians committed to producing better public policy through a greater
  49. understanding of History work featured on their site thinks about history for policy makers in a number of ways making comparisons between past and present
  50. drawing lines of continuity between past and present which might be easier for modern historians to do or using historical thinking to analyze
  51. contemporary issues in the last couple of years historians have written policy papers covering medieval res revolts and modern Mass protest food banks and the
  52. history of mutual Aid or how the first world war might help us respond to mass deaths during the covid pandemic but applying history can take
  53. some other directions as at a Grassroots or Ground Up level this could be in the work of history acts who who bring together historians and activists to
  54. build solidarities across time or in the work of Truth and Reconciliation commissions and processes where people share memories and experiences as part
  55. of a society's transition from Civil War authoritarian re regime or genocide as in Rwanda or Argentina or in the 1619 project which
  56. reoriented US History by placing the consequences of enslavement and the contributions of black Americans at the the center of the national
  57. narrative playing with the past is altogether more playful than the messages of Applied history but that doesn't mean it's any less effective or
  58. powerful in introducing the public to history in fact it might even be more so as it's a kind of form of History by stealth playing is an important part of
  59. learning to play something means understanding how the world of the game functions and to be able to situate ourselves
  60. sufficiently within it to imagine how the world could change as the game develops so this could be through pageants or reenactments or theatrical
  61. Productions many of you may have been on a school trip where you dressed up as a viking or a Victorian it can also mean being playful
  62. with the past either through memes or through comedy or it can be literal play from board games to video
  63. games the Counterpoint to the processes of producing public history might be how audiences receive it the behaviors that we undertake to engage with the past
  64. this is one of the key themes of Jerome deg's work consuming history here degut is particularly interested in history as a Leisure Pursuit as something that is
  65. entertaining to be enjoyed and by understanding public history as something that is consumed or commodified we start to think about the
  66. impact of supply and demand of commercial priorities or what the consumer wants on the kinds of history that are produced so we could think
  67. about the Bridget in effect not only on TV but on historical fiction or Tik Tok [Music] trends for the continued dominance of
  68. War documentaries and biographies there is scope though within history as part of popular culture to shape Trends offer new understandings or
  69. to read against the grain so to push back against the dominant narrative by looking at what's been unsaid especially through collaboration with audiences we
  70. can work with our audiences to encourage their participation and contribution to the process of historical production to create new knowledge and understanding
  71. whether that's through Big Data projects where volunteers contribute metadata transcription or cataloging work to designing and co-producing together
  72. and I've got one example here for you to have a look at which is uh the work of the pit Rivers Museum in Oxford which done which has done work with its source
  73. communities for uh many of the very Colonial items that it holds in its collection in the photographs you can see on the slides there are examples of
  74. reinterpretation or updated descriptions that also think critically about how knowledge was produced and shared in the past these examples not only think about
  75. the changing behaviors of the museum in deliberately acknowledging their own failures or shortcomings but they also invite the audience to behave in new
  76. ways no longer passive receivers of knowledge but challenged to think about how that knowledge came to be there in the first place and to reflect on their
  77. own role as visitors to that space But who are the public and who gets to own the past these are the last
  78. questions that I'm going to cover in today's lecture but they are not insignificant we should acknowledge that from the outset public is a difficult
  79. term there is no singular public for any of our activities as public historians there all audiences or publics are most close more closely defined than that so
  80. that could be a geographically or socially or politically determined public a specific demographic in terms of age education level race class or
  81. gender or even trying to reach an audience who commonly engages with that form of History these questions pose their own
  82. ethical challenges for us as public historians as we gauge what is appropriate in the competition for attention and Commercial
  83. Success different groups also have different relationships and reactions to the past and this can often lead to contestation about how a historical
  84. event should be communicated or remembered or who should be sharing this history history this is especially true of moments of national
  85. commemoration um which really help us to understand who and what is seen as belonging to the nation so we particularly saw this
  86. during the centinary of the first world war in the UK activities for which started in 2014 and which came to close in 2018 despite the best efforts of
  87. first world war historians to push for a longer chronology this was a period of immense public history activity with multiple
  88. publics and in the UK some really important themes emerged in locally funded projects particularly thinking about women's involvement in the war for
  89. instance um as well as the histories of uh Belgian refugees who came to the UK my own work on Colonial experience of the of the war meant that I was
  90. particularly interested in how race and empire were represented in the centinary in a context of the hostile environment islamophobia brexits and laterally the
  91. Windrush Scandal there had also been an important study done in 2012 by researchers at the Imperial War Museum called who
  92. remembrance which showed the importance of this representation uh especially for young people growing up in the UK could a more diverse memory of the first world
  93. war be inculcated well let's look at a couple of examples of change during the centinary the first are the brand new
  94. galleries opened by the Imperial War Museum in 2014 one of the core driving features of the gallery was that it first it was the
  95. first audience without the living memory of the conflict curators couldn't rely on what they called the grandfather tour in audience surveys before the galleries
  96. were designed the curators were shocked by the lack of knowledge of the conflict Beyond mud and trenches and therefore sought to answer four main questions why
  97. did the war start why did it go on for so long how was it won and lost and what was its aftermath but they also sought to
  98. highlight the the global aspects of the conflict and to move to a less Anglo or eurocentric view of the war the galleries included displays which spoke
  99. to the experience of troops from the West Indies India West Africa as well as New Zealand South Africa Australia and Canada for some though the galleries
  100. didn't go far enough if they hadn't seen themselves represented previously the changes felt insufficient some other changes brought
  101. in the memorial landscape of the first world war firstly we have the Lions of the Great War Memorial in smic in the West
  102. Midlands which is a 10-ft bronze statue depicting a seek soldier in F length trench coat which was designed to honor the sacrifices made by South Asian
  103. service PE Personnel of all faiths from the Indian subcontinent who fought for Britain in the first world war and other conflicts by choosing a seek Soldier the
  104. representative is one of the few groups allowed to fight on the Western Front and it speaks to ideas about martial which tells us something about
  105. who or what is chosen to be celebrated the site was subject to vandalism just 5 days after it was opened in what was described as a
  106. racially aggravated criminal damage which I think tells us something about the kind of contestation of memory in this
  107. period secondly we have the new Memorial to African and Caribbean service people that was built in windr square in Brixton what's interesting about this
  108. Memorial and its public is the choice of location rather than pushing for inclusion in the M Memorial landscape of Central London around Hyde Park where
  109. there are memorials to Australians and new zealanders as well as the Commonwealth Memorial Gates the the choice of Brixton
  110. made explicit the connections between this service and migration and the legacies of Empire as well as meeting the public for whom this was for where
  111. they are as literary and historical scholar shant Nas commented in a piece for the guardian at the beginning of the
  112. centinary the recent Global turn in First World War studies and commemorative events is partly propelled by Europe's changing image of itself we
  113. live in Multicultural societies but baress vary leading the colonial war commemoration recently noted our boys were not just tommies
  114. they were Tariq and tenders too they came from many nations and held many different faiths fares is an important caveat as much too farite parties Keen
  115. to whiten the war as to ethnic and religious groups who may want to hijack his pluralities Das would go on at the end
  116. of the Centenary to comment on how Colonial service was instrumentalizes instrumentalized during the four years in many of the ways he had cautioned
  117. against this leads us to one of the most useful concepts for public historians the idea of a usable past I'm going to quote Jordan over again the idea of a
  118. usable past is hardly new but is probably more prominent now than ever before if the past is usable then history is an open field that is
  119. available to be put to diverse even conflicting ends these uses are often found Blended together in a world that constantly affirms the
  120. value of knowing about the past to inform the present and the future history as entertainment uses the past for commercial purposes history as
  121. Consciousness raising uses the past for political ends history as public education uses the past to inform audiences about political and social
  122. trends so this concept can help us identify where narratives are being produced in service of political or econ economic projects and it can be the
  123. public history project in itself how do we as public historians want or choose to use the past I'm going to finish with one of my
  124. favorite examples of a usable past that's now 12 years old the Olympic Games opening ceremony from London 2012 this example is particularly in my
  125. mind because of where the UCL East Campus is in the Olympic Park where I see the stadium every week as Katherine Baker describes the opening
  126. ceremony is a really important example of public history it's a narrative of national identity anchored in the past and a creative process of telling that
  127. story similar to theater or pageantry she writes that the London 2012 opening ceremony appeared deeply informed by what one might call such a mosaic mode
  128. of representing the nation which presents the nation as the sum of of multiple and Divergent political uh personal
  129. biographies within this Mosaic we see representatives of all four nations markers of progress within UK history not least
  130. industrialization as well as the NHS important social and political movements like the suffrage movement and the arrival of the Empire wind Rush as
  131. well as culturally significant characters from children's stories and pop culture uh all the way up to Tim bur late inventor of the
  132. internet the ceremony was understood to be a moment of national storytelling the creation of a usable past for the Contemporary UK and as a result it
  133. received Divergent reception whether you saw it as Aiden Burley conservative MP did as Lefty Multicultural crap or as Jonathan freden saw saw it exemplifying
  134. the ethos of public service and ethnic diversity as an expression of radical patriotism or highly mediated commodity spectacle you understood this was a
  135. statement to the world about how the UK or at least how Danny Bole Frank Cal Boyce and the Olympic Committee were choosing to present it while Bole has
  136. been evasive about his political intentions in the ceremony Baker comments that any attempt to define national values which Bole
  137. sets out as tolerance descent inclusivity engineering culture humor ambition and modesty is of course intensely political and moreover imposes
  138. an unwarranted universalism on the process of generating Collective narratives from sources so when we critically engage
  139. with public history projects we need to consider the kinds of usable pasts that are being produced in these forms usable pasts are often seen as a
  140. quite top-down process but it's important to think about how they can can be generated from the bottom up particularly
  141. important in political activism as a discipline public history attends to other forms of knowledge and expertise from oral history to Folklore to songs
  142. or cultural practice and intangible Heritage which expands our definition of sources as we've seen in this lecture the broad modes and means of producing
  143. history for public audiences has made it increasingly accessible for those wanting to do it for themselves this is particularly evident through
  144. public digital histories through YouTube Tik Tok or podcasts and our job as public historians is to make sense of this landscape and think seriously about
  145. what impact this past has on the present so I hope that today I've persuaded you of the importance of public history so that the next time you
  146. are scrolling through social media or watching TV or even just walking down the street you can think twice about how history is happening in public the
  147. questions we ask of public history are the questions we can ask to history full stop who owns the past what kind of historical narrative are they telling
  148. and who for thank you very much

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