Public History of the Built Environment: Theory and Practice

This course explores the ways history is put to work in the world. It focuses primarily on how communities shape their relationship to and understanding of the built environment. A core premise of this course is that practicing public history requires a professional outlook, set of skills, and ethical stance beyond what is required of historians. As such, our course will analyze the role of public historians in shaping the relationship between communities and the built environment through oral history, museums, and historic sites; on the internet through digital humanities projects; and explore how the built environment acts as an agent in popular and public understandings of the past through interventions like monuments, memorials, and historic markers. We will consider how versions of the past are created, institutionalized, and communicated through and with the built environment. Ultimately, we will engage key ideas, themes, and practical concerns confronting public historians and preservationists in a variety of professional and institutional settings.

This is an Academically-Based Community Service (ABCS) course.