Public History: A Crash Course

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History doesn’t just happen. People make it happen.

I took a course in Public History at Portland State University this fall and spent a term thinking about how history surrounds us, informs us, deceives us, heals us, and injures us. 

There is historical truth but history is never settled.

“The future is unwritten” - Joe Strummer

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The Oregon Historical Society has a research library open to anyone working on a research project. Come in and take a look at Old Oregon.

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Where do you see history?

Public history is more ubiquitous than I realized once I started thinking about it. Bars, hotels, theaters, they all use historical images to create environments meant to engage people.

Why do people respond to museums or exhibits? Why do they not?

Why did people respond to the World’s Fair?

Why do people build monuments, memorials, trophy cases, murals?

Why do we carve our names into trees and bathroom stalls?

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The Gresham Historical Society is currently featuring the models of Gresham mason Bruce Plumb. Come lose yourself in his surreal world!

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History is Work

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Chinook Story

A Chinook Nation - Portland State University Collaboration

Indigenous systems of information

as opposed to “traditions” or “cultural values.”

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The Oregon Historical Society presents Fighting for the Right to Fight, a traveling exhibit from the World War 2 Museum.

Vincent “Roi” Ottley and A. Philip Randolph were Black writers who wouldn’t settle for Black veterans coming home to Jim Crow.

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Jim Crow was born in the South, but it spread to every part of America.

If you’re American, Jim Crow is your history.

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See You in the Streets reveals how public historian Ruth Sergel created a recurring interactive memorial to the victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, led a diverse coalition to create an open archive and epic centennial rememberance of the event that changed history for workers after decades of similar tragedies

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“Is there meaning for me on the other side of that door?”

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Exhibits are both education and art. We can think of them from multiple perspectives...By generating...relationships among disparate things and ideas, metaphor expands our understanding.

Leslie Bedford. The Art of Museum Exhibitions

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The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores not only Jewish history which is intamately bound to discrimination, but the history of discrimination itself. The Holocaust becomes more esoteric and abstract to the living with each passing year. We are increasingly tempted to view it as an artifact of a more barbaric time instead of a solemn warning of what can happen when we do not challenge discrimination.

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If you want to work in history you need to know NAGPRA

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Renew your Nightmares

Reaffirm your Dreams

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Who tells your story?

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