Note: This is part three of the readings. Click here for part one. Click here for part two.
Rutner and Schonfeld, Supporting the Changing Research Practices
This article looks at different facets of the historical profession, how the do their work, and recommendations for change. A personal interest describes ;]p..the lack of training in actual archives for graduate students. They feel similarly unprepared to organize research or handle non-document sources. Is this a sink or swim experience being offered by academia?
Have we spent sufficient time in this class looking at tools for research? Especially tools that might help organize the abundant research required by historical writing?
Does this graduate program facilitate learning how to access information?
Does this program facilitate collaboration and cooperation between students? With faculty?
Guidelines for Professional Evaluation
This post by the American Historical Association sets guidelines and recommends best practices for digital historians, and history departments looking to update to or work with digital scholarship or employing and evaluating digital scholars. The relationship depicted requires communication between the two, and encourages collaborating with technically minded institutions, like the friendly neighborhood/campus library.
What responsibilities does the AHA place on digital historians? On universities? Is this enough to foster a productive relationship between traditional departments and digital historians?
To what extent do the AHA guidelines respond to and work with this week’s other readings?
Rebecca Conrad, Historians in Public
Here Rebecca Conrad reviews Ian Tyrell’s Historians in Public. This work looks at the changes in the historical profession in the twentieth century, including the New History movement, the effect of the World Wars, and the genesis of public history. Tyrell’s work is largely a critique of these movements. He also makes the claim that public history is “an extension of academic history.” While a useful retrospective on developments in academia, Tyrell’s work has several problematic blindspots.
Are historians specializing to find audiences? Or are they specializing to stay relevant and employable?
Is all history public history? Is it the same as doing history in public?
How does Tyrell’s work show his biases?
Does academic historian maintain any fruitful connection to K-12?
What relationship does history have to activism and social change?
Congratulations y’all. That’s the last of the readings for this class. You did it, fam.