Tag Archive for 'public history'

New Cultural Tourism Handbook

Published by Sylvia Miller on September 21, 2009 in Related News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

The American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has released a manual to help communities recognize and develop their potential for cultural tourism.  The Center has sent it to a number of American Indian communities and made it available as a pdf download on their website.

The publication, entitled “A Handbook on American Indian Cultural Tourism in North Carolina,” contains useful information gleaned from a workshop on cultural tourism that the Center held in June 2009.  It identifies types of cultural tourism, offers guidance on resources and best practices, and presents step-by-step advice on planning, marketing, and funding  a tourism project.

I find the “Sample Community Inventory” (Appendix E) especially interesting.   This list will remind communities of all the valuable assets in their areas that might merit protection or promotion.  The activity of prompting community members to recognize the value of the landscapes, languages, architecture, cultural events, and other assets in their own backyards reminds me of the work of civil rights activists and public historians who encourage people to recognize the power and value of their own voices and memories.  (See “My History Is America’s History” and “Bitten by the Public History Bug.”)

“Bitten by the Public History Bug”

Published by Sylvia Miller on August 5, 2009 in LCRM Project News. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The anniversary of my first day in book publishing (August 5, 1985) is a good day to observe that the LCRM project has brought me in contact with some of the most inspiring authors I have met in my twenty-four years of scholarly publishing.  They are scholar-activists who want their scholarship “to live and work in the world” (quoting Bob Korstad, whose book on the North Carolina Fund, coauthored with Jim Leloudis, will be published by UNC Press in Spring 2010 ).  They are interested in recognizing, recording, and revealing hidden histories as told and interpreted by the people who lived them.  They believe that not only are these histories valuable in themselves and must not be lost, but also that there is much that society can learn from them.

I have also met some inspiring librarians whose work is focused on making voices seen and heard that have lived in practical obscurity for a long time in archives and attics.

My colleague at UNC Press, acquiring editor Mark Simpson-Vos, says that I have been “bitten by the public history bug”!

Continue reading ‘“Bitten by the Public History Bug”’

My History Is America’s History

Published by Sylvia Miller on June 16, 2009 in LCRM Project News. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Recently I met a couple of librarians who advise individual families and communities on archiving their history.  As I listened to them talk about their work, I recognized a connection among the work of archivists, historians, and community organizers.  Convincing someone that her grandmother’s letters and the old photographs in the attic are valuable historical artifacts is a form of community organizing, akin to the work that activists do to convince people that they have a voice for change.   Oral history work is parallel, too, in the way that historians go into communities and convince ordinary citizens that their memories are valuable and they should record them so that their voices and perspectives will not be lost to future generations.  There is an urgency to all of this work, because for myriad causes–both cruelly accidental and shockingly deliberate–voices, memories, communities, and cultures are continually in danger of being lost.

Take a look at this beautifully produced publication “My History Is America’s History: 15 Things You Can Do to Save America’s Stories,” which was created at the NEH under Bill Ferris during the Clinton years.

It includes “How to do an interview” and “Playing detective with photographs,” among other useful sections.  Some of the people doing this good work today will surely find it useful.  I ordered a used print copy on Amazon for a negligible price.

As these commonalities of purpose come into focus, the connections among our LCRM project partners–the Center for Civil Rights (community organizers), the Southern Oral History Program (historians), the UNC Special Collections Library (archivists)–are clearer, and despite its complexity (it is unusual for a collaborative project to have four partners!) the project gains coherence.  I’ll post more on project ideas and activities soon . . .