Abstract
Since the field is inherently multifaceted, a good way to understand public history is through its constituent components and exploring how they each developed over time. Public historians act in a variety of capacities and work within various institutions – public, private, academic, and cultural. As such, breaking public history down into the types of work that public historians engage, and the commonalities among them, is one way to make sense of such a diverse field. The first section of this essay addresses areas that employ the conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage for the purpose of public-facing historical interpretation: historic preservation, archival management, folklore, and oral history. The second section examines the evolution of how history has been presented to public audiences through museum curating and exhibition design, tours, and performance. The final section concludes with emerging directions in public history, with a special emphasis on issues of social justice, which has come to the fore in public history theory and practice.
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Donaldson, R. (2019). The Development and Growth of Public History. In: Fitzgerald, T. (eds) Handbook of Historical Studies in Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0942-6_56-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0942-6_56-1
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