Dr Katie Carpenter explores students’ introduction to public history at university, and the implications that initial teaching has for their understandings of and futures within the field.
What is public history? How do we define it? These questions were discussed in the first workshop of the What is Public History Now? network. These two questions typically emerge in a familiar setting: in the first seminar of the Introductory Public History Undergraduate Module (or ‘IPHUM’). These modules, typically one-term for first or second year history undergraduates, are increasingly popping up in history programmes across the country. In this blog post I consider how we are presenting to our students what public history is through our design of IPHUMs.
Public history is, of course, a broad spectrum of practice. Lecturers specialising in public history come through a range of routes. Some take the more traditionally ‘academic’ route by beginning their career with a PhD thesis in the theory and study of public history. Others take a more practice-based approach, perhaps beginning their career in public-facing institutes that engage with the past, such as archives and heritage sites. Some, such as myself, do a PhD unrelated to public history but later take an interest in communicating to the public through creative means. And this is only the lecturers! As we stress to our students, public historians are not just lecturers, but the countless professionals in a myriad of sectors that engage with the past and communicate to the public. We might discuss with students the multitude of activities and professionals under the ‘public history’ umbrella, but a range of factors influence what we are communicating to students about what public history is or should be. IPHUMs are, after all, most students first foray into studying public history
Having taught at eight different universities in the UK, in my experience, there are three strands that underpin IPHUMs. The first represents public history as something to be studied. Modules this way inclined present public history as the study of the representation of the past in the present day, such as movies and statues. Related assessments, often written, ask students to critically analyse some form of public history. The second strand presents public history as something to be practised. Such modules emphasise the doing of public history such as curation, podcasting and social media. Assessments on this strand are non-traditional, asking students to create something intended for a public audience. The third approach ‘splits the difference’ and somewhat abstractly examines practical, organisational aspects of public history such as intended audiences and access issues. For this approach, assessments can sit somewhere between the practical and traditional, sometimes by having students ‘propose’ something practical in a written form. Naturally, these different approaches communicate different ideas about what public history is. Is it something we do? Or something we study?
Realistically, most IPHUMs take at least some aspects from each of these three strands. There is a particular tendency to have multiple assessments, some which are practice-based and some which are written. The challenge is reaching a balance that is not overloaded and retains specific learning goals that are coherently weaved through teaching methods, content and assessments. How these modules are taught also says something about what public history is. We emphasise that public history is undertaken by practitioners outside academia such as activists, archivists, curators and movie-makers. But the bulk of IPHUMs that I have taught on use the classic lecture-and-seminar format. It has struck me as counterintuitive to present public history as something which is done and then teach it through lectures and seminars in which students are listening and talking but not necessarily doing. Emphasising that public history takes places outside universities and then teaching it within them poses a similar contradiction, but one for which there is no obvious solution.
The IPHUMs I have taught have frequently been compulsory for first- or second-year modules. How does this change our presentation of public history to our students? On the one hand, it presents public history as a vital skill for historians, like it’s sister compulsory modules of primary source analysis and historiography. On the other hand, they can be unpopular with students, possibly stemming from the penchant for student group work in IPHUMs and a general resentment for core modules.
Our decisions in designing IPHUMs are telling our students what public history is. Despite what we might say it is in the first week, the content, teaching methods and assessments communicate their own messages. Since typically these modules last one term, there are only c. 10 weeks of lectures and seminars to ‘introduce’ students to an extraordinarily broad spectrum of practice and study that falls under the auspices of ‘public history’. We should be mindful of how our pedagogical decisions are defining public history to our students; their impression of what public history is may well influence future decisions from module choices to further study and beyond.