Public History

Oral History Society

Public History: A Critical BibliographyAuthor(s): Jill Liddington and Simon DitchfieldSource: Oral History, Vol. 33, No. 1, Re-presenting the Past (Spring, 2005), pp. 40-45Published by: Oral History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40179818 .

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PUBLIC HISTORY:

A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

by Jill Liddington and Simon Ditchfield

This bibliography offers a starting point for Oral History readers (and more broadly for students) who found the vox pop interesting, and would like to move to a more systematic study of public history and the debates around it. It aims to provide readers with a tool to help orientate them in what is a notably wide-ranging and fast- changing field.

The bibliography is organised into sections, mainly by geography rather than by theme. The reason for these particular subdivisions is that 'public history' has tended to develop a distinct profile in different national cultures. The conscious use of the term 'public history' has grown up in distinct ways - in different places, at different times and in different ways. It varies between relatively 'new' nations inventing themselves as republics (eg United States) or defining themselves as distinct from their colonial past (eg Australia); 'old' nations (eg Britain) which may conventionally feel more comfortable with the word 'heritage'; and between, say, French- or Italian-speaking nations which use different terminology (eg patrimoine in France and patrimonio in Italy, both of which have very particular national connotations).

While we have attempted to cast our net widely, we are conscious that some cultures (eg Spanish-speaking) remain under-represented; and Oral History hopes to produce periodically addenda to this bibliography in order to address gaps and to ensure it remains up-to-date.

For this bibliography, we have selected only those titles - books, articles and journals - which reflect public history debates or which discuss popular understandings of the past. So we have not included examples of individual presentations of the past (eg a historical novel, biography or popular history book). There are just two exceptions to this. First, section C reflects the discussion of heritage in the UK: it is offered as background to the very recent emer- gence of public history in UK and it is included in the absence of extensive discussion here about public history. And Section G on

magazines in the UK reflects - rather than discusses - popular history journalism.

The bibliography has been compiled jointly. Simon Ditchfield is an early modern Italian historian, who specialises in looking at how previous societies related to their pasts; and Jill Liddington is a modern British historian specialising in suffrage history. The editors' critical comments after each title aim to reflect the usefulness of each item - book or journal, article or website - to debate within the field of public history (rather than reflecting its wider, more general value). The inclusion of references to some URLs on the www is a reminder that Public History is an area in which the traditional forms of publication in hard copy editions of journals and books necessarily often lag behind developments in the public, electron- ically-sawy arena.

A. UNITED STATES We start with the country which in the mid- 1970s gave us the term 'public history' as a port- manteau phrase to describe employment outside universities of trained historians. (The birth of the term can reputedly be dated with some precision and its originator identified: Robert Kelley in 1975 at the University of California, Santa Barbara.) However, an older lineage can also be traced earlier, to Franklin Roosevelt's 1930s New Deal and its federal initiatives to uncover and record ordinary American citizens' legacy of survival and struggle.

From the very start, one feature of US public history - compared to the UK's heritage sector - has been the adoption of a broad interpreta- tion of the term to encompass business historians, community historians as well as interpreters who work for the National Park Service.

The United States runs a number of post- graduate courses in Public History training. This is different from the UK where our accreditation usually lies with the individual professional body (Library Association, Museums Association, Society of Archivists). This reminds us of the

40 ORAL HISTORY Spring 2005



degree to which the shapes of disciplines and subject areas are themselves the product of particular historical circumstances.

A key point of reference here is the website of the National Council of Public History (NCPH), www.ncph.org. Since 1978 it has published The Public Historian and Public History News, both quarterly.

1. The Public Historian, includes: Robert Kelley, 'Public History: its origins, nature and prospects', 1:1, 1978; Kelley was an envi- ronmental historian; Ronald J Grele, 'Whose Public? Whose History? What is the Goal of a Public Historian?', 3:1, 1981; Barbara J Howe, 'Reflections on an idea: NCPH's first decade', 11, 1989; Page Putnam Miller, 'Reflections on the Public History movement', 14, 1992; Philip V Scarpino, 'Common ground: reflections on the past, present and future of Public History and the NCPH', 16, 1994; David Glassberg, 'Public History & the Study of Memory', 18:2, 1996 (which stimulated a roundtable discussion with Lowenthal, Frisch etc, 19:2, 1997).

2. Susan Benson, Stephen Brier and Roy Rosen- zweig (eds), Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, Philadelphia, 1986; includes: Michael H Frisch, 'The Memory of History'; Michael Wallace, 'History Museums in the United States', recommended for its overview of the challenge to elite ancestral societies (eg Daughters of the American Revolution) by Roosevelt's federal state as the public guardian of popular memory in the 1930s; Wallace is a Radical History Review editor.

3. R Rosenzweig & D Thelen (eds), The Pres- ence of the Past: popular uses of history in Amer- ican Life, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Built around a large-scale survey conducted in 1994 of the views of 1,500 ordinary Americans on how they related to the past; interesting on 'everyone their own historian'; scrupulously presented, containing not only the results of the survey in tabular form (Appendix 2) but also a detailed account of 'How we did the survey' (Appendix 1).

4. Radical History Review. RHR began its regular public history section in 1987 (see interview with Mike Wallace, 79, 2001); includes articles on memory, politics and place (eg South Africa, Berlin). For an early US dissenting voice see: Howard Green, 'A critique of the professional Public History movement', RHR 25, 1981.

5. Public History News, published by NCPH; also contains employment information.

6. Donald Ritchie, 'When History goes public: recent experiences in the United States', Oral History, 29:1,2001.

7. J Gardner and P LaPaglia (eds), Public History: essays from the field, Malabar: Krieger, 1999. This collection is intended as a successor to Barbara J Howe and Emory L Kemp's, Public history: an introduction (Malabar, Krieger, 1986). It is very much written from within the US 'public history' world; this is an indispens- able guide to the way US public historians view themselves and their work. There is also an extremely useful appendix of Resources (pp 397-407), listing the major organisations involved in the area of history outside universities. Examples: Constance Schulz, 'Becoming a Public Histo- rian'; P Cantelon, 'As a Business: Hired, not Bought'.

B. AUSTRALIA While the 1970s saw the raised awareness of ordinary Australians about their past, Public History only seriously took off down-under in the late 1980s - as a direct result of the 1988 bicentennial celebrations. This provoked debate on which Australia was being celebrated. In Australia, Public History has always been linked with the aboriginal question - which has recently been the subject of renewed historical controversy (see B. 5, below).

Significantly, 'Public History, Australian- style' developed partly as a critique of the US movement, while sharing its commitment to training, employment and careers. Freelance practitioners (hence 'Phyllis Phame, Girl Histo- rian') positioned themselves against the tenured complacency of academics. More closely aligned to community history, radical public historians in Australia launched themselves into neigh- bourhood battles, 'historians-on-the-waterfront' stepping fearlessly into the witness box to take on Sydney's ruthless city developers.

1 . John Rickard and Peter Spearritt (eds), Pack- aging the Past? Public Histories - a special number of Australian Historical Studies, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1991; includes: Graeme Davison, 'Paradigms of Public History', an excellent introduction; George Morgan, 'History on the Rocks'.

2. Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian history, Allen & Unwin, St Leonard's NSW, 2000. Recommended as a useful, wide-

Spring 2005 ORAL HISTORY 41



ranging collection of essays on the ways the past enters everyday life in Australia; written by the doyen of Australian public history.

3. Public History Review, launched in 1992 by the newly-formed Professional Historians' Asso- ciation (PHA); eg: Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, 'Streetwise: Public History in New South Wales', 5/6, 1996-7.

4. Stuart Macintyre & Anna Clark, The History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003; an engaged and gripping account of how attempts to rewrite the history of European settlement in Australia have provoked a fierce conservative counter-attack.

5. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, theory & politics, Routledge, 1995. For many years a professor at Griffith University; this study includes frequent Australian examples.

6. Laurajane Smith, Archaeological Theory and the politics of cultural heritage, Routledge, London/New York, 2004; a much-needed survey of how relationships between indigenous peoples and the archaeological establishment have got into difficulties. We are grateful to Laurajane for providing the following titles:

7. W Hudson and G Bolton (eds), Creating Australia: Changing Australian History, Allen andUnwin, 1997.

8. G Davison and C McConville (eds), A Heritage Handbook, Allen and Unwin, 1991.

9. Peter Read, Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

10. M Pearson and S Sullivan, Looking After Heritage Places, Melbourne University Press, 1995.

C. ENGLISH HERITAGE PLC From the 1970s, while the US developed a public history movement, the UK (or more accu- rately, England) debated the meaning of its national heritage. The traditional birth-date of the word 'heritage' in its modern sense (as opposed to its biblical meaning as personal inheritance) is seen to be 1975, European Archi- tectural Heritage Year. This came hard on the heels of the exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum: Destruction of the Country House 1875-1975 that opened in 1974 (with the catalogue edited by Roy Strong, Marcus Binney and John Harris).

The next significant moment in the word's history came with the publication of books by Patrick White and David Lowenthal in 1985 (see below C. 1 and 2). That most artificial of confec- tions, the 'heritage debate', was launched by Robert Hewison in 1987, and received its even- tual come-uppance in the last book published in his lifetime by Raphael Samuel. The latter's death and the high esteem enjoyed by his memory has had the rather unfortunate effect of freezing the debate, though useful works continue to be published which help to historicise Britain's continuing engagement with its pasts.

1 . David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985; although perhaps too wide- ranging and comprehensive for its own good (and so easier and more productive to dip into than to read straight through) this work set new standards when it first appeared, particularly by providing a chronological depth to the discussion. It continues to enjoy great influence (having sold in excess of 60,000 copies since publication). The author is currently preparing a second edition, which should be out in Spring 2006.

2. Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country: the national past in contemporary Britain, Verso, London, 1985; a thoughtful reflection on the Thatcherisation of the national past, examining the tensions between private capital's interests and those of heritage site preservation (eg the National Trust).

3. Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a climate of decline, Methuen, London, 1987; the book which above all demonised heritage as a right-wing conspiracy theory; helpful on such hypocrisies as the closure of public libraries. However, very much a tract for its times, and becomes a bit of a rant as it nears the present: has not aged well.

4. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory vol. 1, Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, Verso, 1994; this largely rehabilitated heritage as an expression of people's history: 'the work of a thousand pair of hands'; eloquent and passionate; traces the roots of 'heritage' back to the 1930s socialist 'March of History' pageants and the Attlee government's National Parks; part III is perhaps the most suggestive analysis conducted of heritage in the English language! Certainly recommended.

5. John Arnold, Kate Davies & Simon Ditchfield (eds), History and Heritage: consuming the past in contemporary culture, Donhead Publishing, Donhead St Mary, 1998 - an ambitiously wide-




ranging, if patchily executed, collection of essays encompassing themes as diverse as medievalism and horror (an analysis of David Fincher's film Se7en); the Vikings and Donald Duck; how visi- tors use social history museums and 'Braveheart: more than just pulp fiction?'

6. David Lowenthal, The Heritage crusade and the spoils of history, Viking, 1997 and Cambridge University Press, 1998. Recom- mended as (if it's possible) an even more wide- ranging survey than his 1 995 study, although here the breadth is geographical rather than chronological; the interpretative core is provided by a contrastive analysis of the respective 'jobs' of history and heritage (chapter 5-7).

D. PUBUC HISTORY: UK With heritage and the heritage debate dominat- ing the field in the 1970s and 1980s, very little was published in the UK before the late 1990s, and then sometimes under a different label: thus in 1995 History Workshop Journal called its new section 'history at large'. The Oral History journal inaugurated its own Public History section in 1997. Despite the enormous popularity of history (especially since the new millenium and on-line access to the 1901 census shortly after) the debate is still in its infancy.

1. Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, London: Arnold, 2000; this book is admittedly a 'theory of history' primer for university students, but, by drawing on the author's art history expertise plus her practical experience of curating exhibitions, chapter 6 on Public History offers a timely and highly thoughtful discussion of the issues, and is recommended as a starting point. The author is currently preparing a second edition, which should be out late 2005/early 2006.

2. Jill Liddington, 'What is Public History? Publics and their pasts, meanings and practices', Oral History, 2002, 30:1; a very helpful and accessible discussion situating current UK inter- est in how the past is consumed and preserved in the public sphere with corresponding attempts in the US and Australia.

3. Oral History journal's Public History section offers international news and emphasises global issues (like migration) and new technologies (like web-sites). Recently has focused on the use of oral history in museums, eg: Steve Humphries, 'Unseen Stories: video history in museums', 31, 2003; Ann Day and Ken Lunn, 'Tales from the Sea: oral history in British maritime museums', 32, 2004.

4. History Workshop Journal has a 'history at large' section eg: Jay Winter, 'Public History and Scholarship', 1996,42; Justin Champion, 'Seeing the Past: Simon Schama's "A History of Britain" and Public History', 56, 2003.

5. H Kean, P Martin & S Morgan (eds), Seeing History: Public history in Britain now, London: Boutle, 2000. Essays sprang from Ruskin College, Oxford's annual conference in Public History (since 1998); a critique of academic history's exclusion of unofficial 'popular' interac- tion with and uses of the past.

6. Labour History Review has run a public history section since 2001, with reviews of labour heritage museums eg Michael Rowlinson, 'Cadbury World', 67:1, 2002.

7. David Cannadine (ed), History and the Media, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, based on conference at Institute for Historical Research. Reviewed on page 103.

E. SCOTLAND Sir Walter Scott has a strong claim to be consid- ered the godfather of the heritage industry, (with his house Abbotsford the first heritage theme- park). As a direct consequence of this, perhaps, in Scotland the heritage debate has been subsumed into the larger issue of what consti- tutes Scottish identity and how the latter relates to its southern neighbour.

1 . David McCrone, Angela Morris & Richard Kiely, Scotland the Brand: the making of Scot- tish Heritage, Edinburgh University Press, Edin- burgh, 1995; a sociological study of 'tartanry' and 'Balmorality' which focuses on both the producers (National Trust for Scotland, Scottish Tourist Board and Historic Scotland) and consumers of Scottish heritage. A useful introduction to 'McHeritage'.

2. Callum G Brown, Up-helly-aa: custom, culture and community in Scotland, Mandolin/Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998; combines the techniques of social history and symbolic anthropology; peels away the layers of meaning contained within this Shetland calendar custom.

3. Jane Nadel-Klein, Fishing for Heritage: moder- nity and loss along the Scottish coast, Berg, Oxford, 2003; draws on fieldwork, novels, folk music and travel literature: the author explores how coastal Scotland has coped with the decline




of the fishing industry and rise of tourism.

F. IRELAND Here, as in Scotland, the issue of heritage and its place in the construction of historical memory in modern society is closely allied with issues of national identity vis a vis its historically aggressive and invariably uncomprehending larger neighbour. Unlike Scotland, however, there has been perhaps more emphasis on the role of literature - both in oral and written forms - in the construction of past narratives of Irish- ness, (hence our inclusion of two works by Declan Kiberd below)

1 . David Brett, The Construction of Heritage, Cork University Press, Cork, 1996; urgently addresses the question 'whose heritage?' offer- ing mainly Irish examples to illustrate how heritage works in the public arena.

2. R F Foster, The Irish Story: telling tales and making it up in Ireland, 2001 and Penguin, London, 2002; collection of essays showing how key moments of Ireland's history have often been turned into myths. For example, chapter 2 'Theme-parks and histories' looks at the culture of famine studies or 'faminism'.

3. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: literature of the modern nation, London: Viking, 1996 - an examination of how the conception of Irishness was articulated and negotiated in literature.

4. Declan Kiberd, Irish Classics, London: Granta, 2001 - a companion to Inventing Ireland, in which the author provides a comprehensive survey of works in both Gaelic and English written since 1600 in order to under- stand how the Irish perceive their past, present and future.

G. POPULAR HISTORY MAGAZINES UK Browsers of the newsprint shelves at their local W H Smith will have noticed over the last four or five years a mushrooming of popular magazines dedicated to heritage, genealogy and television history. They range from the brashly commercial or cosily popularist to the more crit- ically informative and reflective. Examples include:

1 . BBC History magazine, edited by Greg Neale, published by BBC Worldwide; reflects the enormous popularity of history on television and radio; professionally produced and well illus- trated, with regular upcoming television and radio programme news, 'On the Net', places to visit, plus book, journals, audio reviews and longer features; has recently merged with Living

History, bringing some editorial changes.

2. History Today, edited by Peter Furtado; the grandparent among newer and brasher arrivals; also professionally produced and well illus- trated, with a wide range of 'frontline' news and longer features.

3. Ancestors, the family history magazine of the National Archives (TNA). This acronym has now replaced that of the PRO (Public Record Office); August 2004 issue includes features on 'why our ancestors moved house and home around Britain', finding the bigamist in the family tree, and 'The Hit List' bestsellers at the Family Records Centre, London.

4. Family History Monthly; recent features include heraldry, village blacksmiths and tracing the history of your house.

5. Radio Times, weekly from the BBC; regularly features history programmes; for instance, 9-15 Oct 2004 cover story was about the new genealogy series, 'Who Do You Think You Are?' (BBC2), with Jeremy Clarkson displaying two family portraits, and a pull-out guide which 'tells you all you need to know to get started'.

H. FRANCE The French debate has been largely carried out (to borrow Eugen Weber's phrase) in terms of how history has turned peasants into French- men. As well as what has proved to be a very fertile notion of interpreting the place of

. memory (lieux de memoir e), there has been focus on how institutions of the state - from museums to building preservation societies - have contributed to the construction of French patrimoine.

1 . Pierre Nora (ed), Realms of Memory, vol III, The Construction of the French Past: symbols, Columbia University Press, 1998; eg chap XVII by Nora, 'The Era of Commemoration'; this notes how patrimoine which had meant 'inheritance' was widened more inclusively to cover all France's national and artistic 'heritage'.

2. J.- P Babelon, A Chastel, La Notion de Patri- moine, Liana Levi, Paris 1994; a seminal discussion of this central concept which first appeared in Revue de I' Art, 49, 1980.

3. Franchise Choay, Uallegoire du Patrimoine, second edition, Seuil, Paris, 1996 (The English edition: The Invention of the historic monument, Cambridge University Press, 2001, more clearly indicates this volume's content.)




4. Dominique Poulot, Patrimoine et musees: Vin- stitution de la culture, Hachette, Paris 2003; very much a textbook account (with short extracts from contemporary documents) of the history of the museum and its link with the public's under- standing of the past.

I. ITALY As with France, the focus has traditionally been very much directed at how the patrimonio culturale has contributed to the making of Italy as a political unity. Recently it has followed the French lead here (eg Mario Isnenghi's work on 'luoghi di memorial see below), although the privatisation agenda of the Berlusconi government has forced Italian cultural critics to cast their eye at developments in Britain and America (eg Settis, below)

1 . Bruno Tobia, Una patria pergli Italiani. Spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell'ltalia unita (1870- 1900), Laterza, Rome/Bari, 1991; a pioneering study of the making and meaning of such monu- ments as Victor Emanuel's 'Wedding cake' monument in Rome.

2. Mario Isnenghi (ed), / luoghi della memoria. Personaggi e date dell'ltalia unita, Laterza, Rome/Bari, 1997; an application of Nora's methodology to Italy. The influence of Nora is also plainly visible in the conception of a series of short books published by II Mulino, Bologna, (1998ff) entitled: 'L'identita italiana'. Volumes include: Franco La Cecla, La pasta e la pizza; Enrico Menduni, U Autostrada del Sole and Maurizio Ridolfl, Le feste nazionali.

3. Salvatore Settis, Italia Spa: I'assalto al patrimonio culturale, Einaudi, Turin, 2002; the trans- lation of the title, 'Italy Pic - the assault on her heritage', tells you the thrust of this polemic; it is targeted particularly at attempts by the Berlus- coni government (in the Tremonti law of 2002) to draw a distinction between the management (gestione) of its sites and museums (with their

perceived commercial potential), and the cura- torship (tutela) of their infrastructure. (Perhaps someone needs to draw the Italians' attention to what happened when we privatised our railways on similar terms?)

4. Mario Isnenghi, L'ltalia in piazza, i luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai giorni nostri, II Mulino, Bologna, 2004; an application of Nora's approach to that central symbol and space of Italian public life - the piazza - in a historical survey of 1 50 years.

J. FILM

Fortunately, there now exists a literature in which historians are not merely point-scoring and judging films with historical subjects in terms of their factual accuracy. While the American titles provide reflection on the limits and possibilities of film in the telling of stories about the past, the British studies focus more specifically on the self- consciously heritage film (such as from the Merchant-Ivory stable) which has had such a major role in disseminating 'heritage Britain' to the world.

1 . Robert A Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: the challenge of film to our idea of history, Harvard UP, Cambridge USA, 1995.

2. Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: in defense of Hollywood, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS, 2002.

And for the UK:

3. Claire Monk & Amy Sargeant (eds), British Historical Cinema: the history, heritage and costume film, Routledge, London/New York, 2002.

4. Andrew Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema: costume drama since 1980, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

5. History Workshop Journal included a 'Screen Histories' section, issue 56, 2003.




Public History

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Transcript of Public History