New Faces in Public History

New Faces in Public History

Public History is the presentation and interpretation of the past to the public, through careers in archives, museums, cultural resources, heritage tourism, and other venues.  We have been fortunate to have taught hundreds of future public historians who have begun to make their own marks on the field.  Stacey Blackburn (’06) is on the editorial staff of The Public Historian and is completing a Ph.D. in Public History at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Robert T. Parker (’01) is Chief of Interpretation, Education, and Cultural Resources at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta.  Joy Raintree (‘01)is park manager at Redcliffe Plantation State Historic Site in Beech Island, South Carolina.  They are among the new faces of Public History trained here at NC State.

But we don’t want to just prepare students to go work; we want to train historians in the historiography and methodologies of history so that they can apply that knowledge in the public realm.  To accomplish this mission, the program promotes intellectual inquiry through activities such as the 2010 conference Many Voices, One Story?  Public History Narratives of Native American and African American Histories and the 2011 conference “The Real War Will Never Get in the Books”: The Public History of the Civil War, a Sesquicentennial Symposium.

If you are interested in joining us, read more about our program and feel free to contact the Director of Public History.