Category Archives: Education
Jenks Society for Lost Museums
I’ve been blogging over at the Jenks Society for Lost Museums. You can see my thoughts on curatorial poetry and “Report on the food of the robin” and on taxidermy workshops, as well as reflections on the legacy of Prof. Jenks. And also many other reflections and considerations by fellow fellows of the Jenks Society. …
Changing the Ph.D. for a Changing Job Market
Some thoughts, kindly published by Oronte Churm at Inside Higher Education.
One Room (The before post)
I’m about to start my gig at Office Hours, the RISD Museum program “where invited artists, designers, performers, and other community members creatively curate, teach, and experiment through a variety of participatory events.” That’s the official description. In the publicity, it’s “artists, designers, experts, and brainiacs.” I’m not sure what category I’m in: I guess …
A really quick definition of public history
My reply to Mary Rizzo’s Jon Stewart, public historian?, and especially Erik Greenberg’s comment: Let’s think about a “big tent” definition of public historian. Limiting it to “someone grounded in the arguments, practices, and habits of mind of an academically trained historian” leaves out some of the best and most interesting work – and makes for …
Should you get a Ph.D to work in a history museum? – Part 2: Is it useful for the job?
Most curatorial jobs do not require a Ph.D., but is it useful? Does it make one a better curator? The doctoral degree is not designed to train curators. Ph.D. programs in the humanities are, for the most part, designed to train professors at research universities. This may have made sense at one time, but it …
Should you get a Ph.D to work in a history museum? – Part 1
Should you get an MA or Ph.D to work in a history museum? I talk to many students interested in museum work. They ask about what training they should get for this. My story is pretty straight now. For better or worse, an MA seems to be necessary to get ahead in the museum world. …
Sources for Teaching Public History: Michel Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)
(written for the History@Work blog and published there September 4, 2012) Michel Rolph Trouillot, historian, anthropologist, Haitian intellectual and University of Chicago professor, died this July at age 63. I first learned of his death on Twitter, from the tweets by several of my students. They had read his Silencing the Past: Power and the …
Welcome for new public humanities MA students
The next few days you’ll be meeting lots of people and getting lots of advice. Some of it will be general, like “work hard.” Some of it will be very specific: we’ll talk later about what courses you should take. I’m going to try to give you some in-between advice, mostly focused on helping you …
On public humanities 