Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Susan Ferentinos

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-12-16

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0759123748

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LGBT individuals and families are increasingly visible in popular culture and local communities; their struggles for equality appear regularly in news media. If history museums and historic sites are to be inclusive and relevant, they must begin incorporating this community into their interpretation. Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites is straightforward, accessible guidebook for museum and history professionals as they embark on such worthy efforts. This book features: An examination of queer history in the United States. The rapid rate at which queer topics have entered the mainstream could conceivably give the impression that LGBT people have only quite recently begun to contribute to United States culture and this misconception ignores a rich history. A brief overview of significant events in LGBT history highlights variant sexuality and gender in U.S. history, from colonization to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Case studies on the inclusion and telling of LGBT history. These chapters detail how major institutions, such as the Chicago History Museum, have brought this topic to light in their interpretation. An extensive bibliography and reading list. LGBT history is a fascinating story, and the limited space in this volume can hardly do it justice. These features are provided to guide readers to more detailed information about the contributions of LGBT people to U.S. history and culture. This guide complements efforts to make museums and historic sites more inclusive, so they may tell a richer story for all people.

Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Julia Rose

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-05-02

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0759124388

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Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites is framed by educational psychoanalytic theory and positions museum workers, public historians, and museum visitors as learners. Through this lens, museum workers and public historians can develop compelling and ethical representations of historical individuals, communities, and populations who have suffered. It includes various examples of difficult knowledge, detailed examples of specific interpretation methods, and will give readers an in-depth explanation of the psychoanalytic educational theories behind the methodologies. Audiences can more responsibly and productively engage in learning histories of oppression and trauma when they are in measured and sensitive museum learning environments and public history venues. To learn more, check out the website here: http://interpretingdifficulthistory.com/

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Kristin L. Gallas

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-12-23

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 0759123276

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Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites aims to move the field forward in its collective conversation about the interpretation of slavery—acknowledging the criticism of the past and acting in the present to develop an inclusive interpretation of slavery. Presenting the history of slavery in a comprehensive and conscientious manner is difficult and requires diligence and compassion—for the history itself, for those telling the story, and for those hearing the stories—but it’s a necessary part of our collective narrative about our past, present, and future. This book features best practices for: Interpreting slavery across the country and for many people. The history of slavery, while traditionally interpreted primarily on southern plantations, is increasingly recognized as relevant at historic sites across the nation. It is also more than just an African-American/European-American story—it is relevant to the history of citizens of Latino, Caribbean, African and indigenous descent, as well. It is also pertinent to those descended from immigrants who arrived after slavery, whose stories are deeply intertwined with the legacy of slavery and its aftermath. Developing support within an institution for the interpretation of slavery. Many institutions are reticent to approach such a potentially volatile subject, so this book examines how proponents at several sites, including Monticello and Mount Vernon, were able to make a strong case to their constituents. Training interpreters in not only a depth of knowledge of the subject but also the confidence to speak on this controversial issue in public and the compassion to handle such a sensitive historical issue. The book will be accessible and of interest for professionals at all levels in the public history field, as well as students at the undergraduate and graduate levels in museum studies and public history programs.

Public Faces, Secret Lives
Public Faces, Secret Lives

Author: Wendy L. Rouse

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2024-03

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1479830941

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Honorable Mention for the 2023 Francis Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize 2023 Judy Grahn Award-Publishing Triangle Finalist Restores queer suffragists to their rightful place in the history of the struggle for women’s right to vote The women’s suffrage movement, much like many other civil rights movements, has an important and often unrecognized queer history. In Public Faces, Secret Lives Wendy L. Rouse reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the suffrage movement included a variety of individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make women’s suffrage more palatable to the public. Rouse argues that queer suffragists did take meaningful action to assert their identities and legacies by challenging traditional concepts of domesticity, family, space, and death in both subtly subversive and radically transformative ways. Queer suffragists also built lasting alliances and developed innovative strategies in order to protect their most intimate relationships, ones that were ultimately crucial to the success of the suffrage movement. Public Faces, Secret Lives is the first work to truly recenter queer figures in the women’s suffrage movement, highlighting their immense contributions as well as their numerous sacrifices.

Art and Public History
Art and Public History

Author: Rebecca Bush

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 144226845X

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Art and Public History: Approaches, Opportunities, and Challenges examines the relationship between art and public history, outlining opportunities, challenges, and insights drawn from recent initiatives. With a special eye towards audience engagement and challenging historical narratives, all of the case studies and projects combine historical interpretation with contemporary and historical forms of visual art in unique and insightful ways. In addition to emphasizing the kind of practical advice found in the best case studies, this volume also offers a critical discussion of the concepts, tools, skills and technologies that contribute to fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration. These issues are addressed through sections on projects related to historical artworks; contemporary art and artists; and public art and the built environment. It addresses how public historians can incorporate art into their practice by outlining opportunities, challenges, and insights drawn from recent projects in the United States and Britain. These projects have taken place across a variety of platforms, including local and national history museums; art galleries; digital archives; classrooms; historical markers; and public art projects. The case studies incorporate the perspectives of different stakeholders, including public historians, artists, and audiences. The book will provide both public history practitioners and academics with useful guidance on how art can be integrated into public history initiatives, through critical discussion of tools, strategies, and technologies that contribute to fruitful collaboration and audience engagement across a variety of platforms. Readers will walk away with new ideas, strategies, and practical considerations for interdisciplinary projects to attract audiences in new ways.

Interpreting Food at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Food at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Michelle Moon

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1442257229

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Food is such a friendly topic that it’s often thought of as a “hook” for engaging visitors – a familiar way into other topics, or a sensory element to round out a living history interpretation. But it’s more than just a hook – it’s a topic all its own, with its own history and its own uncertain future, deserving of a central place in historic interpretation. With audiences more interested in food than ever before, and new research in food studies bringing interdisciplinary approaches to this complicated but compelling subject, museums and historic sites have an opportunity to draw new audiences and infuse new meaning into their food presentations. You’ll find: A comprehensive, thematic framework of key concepts that will help you contextualize food history interpretations; A concise, evaluative review of the historiography of food interpretation; Case studies featuring the expression of these themes in the real world of museum interpretation; and Best practices for interpreting food. Interpreting Food offers a framework for understanding the big ideas in food history, suggesting best practices for linking objects, exhibits and demonstrations with the larger story of change in food production and consumption over the past two centuries – a story in which your visitors can see themselves, and explore their own relationships to food. This book can help you develop food interpretation with depth and significance, making relevant connections to contemporary issues and visitor interests.

Interpreting Agriculture at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Agriculture at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Debra A. Reid

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-01-23

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1442230126

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Interpreting Agriculture in Museums and Historic Sites orients readers to major themes in agriculture and techniques in education and interpretation that can help you develop humanities-based public programming that enhance agricultural literacy. Case studies illustrate the ways that local research can help you link your history organization to compelling local, national (even international) stories focused on the multidisciplinary topic. That ordinary plow, pitch fork, and butter paddle can provide the tangible evidence of the story worth telling, even if the farm land has disappeared into subdivisions and agriculture seems as remote as the nineteenth century. Other topics include discussion of alliances between rural tourism and community-supported agriculture, farmland conservation and stewardship, heritage breed and seed preservation efforts, and antique tractor clubs. Any of these can become indispensable partners to history organizations searching for a new interpretive theme to explore and new partners to engage.

Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Gretchen Buggeln

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-08-22

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1442269472

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Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sitesencourages readers to consider the history of religion as integral to American culture and provides a practical guide for any museum to include interpretation of religious traditions in its programs and exhibits. Combining both theoretical essays and practical case studies from a wide cross section of the field, the book explores how museums are finding new ways to connect with audiences about this important aspect of American history. This book explores the practical and interpretive problems that museums encounter when they include religion in their interpretation: How do we make sure visitors don't think the museum is taking the side of any particular religious group, or proselytizing, or crossing church-state boundaries? How do we spin out a rich story with the available artifact base? What are the opportunities and perils of telling particular religious stories in a multicultural context? These and other questions are addressed in a series of interpretive essays and case studies that capture the experimental and innovative religion programming that is beginning to find a place in American history museums. An introduction by Gretchen Buggeln places the subject of religion and museums in the intellectual context of national and international scholarship. Case studies cover a range of topics and venues that include outdoor museums, historic houses and exhibits; interpretive issues of secular and sacred contexts; and interpretive techniques like dialogue, music and first person accounts. A concluding essay suggests a publicly oriented historiography of religion for American museums and historic sites.

Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Debra A. Reid

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-09-19

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1538115506

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Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites is for anyone who wants to better understand the environment that surrounds us and sustains us, who wants to become a better steward of that environment, and who wants to share lessons learned with others. The process starts by focusing attention on the environment – the physical space that constitutes the largest three-dimensional object in museum collections. It involves conceptualizing spaces and places of human influence; spaces that contain layer upon layer documenting human struggles to survive and thrive. This evidence exists in natural environments as well as city centers. The process continues by adopting an environment-centric view of the spaces destined to be interpreted. This mind-set forms the basis for devising research plans that document how humans have changed, destroyed, conserved and sustained spaces over time, and the ways that the environment reacts. Interpretation built on this evidence then becomes the basis for minds-on engagement with the places that humans inhabit and the spaces that they have changed and continue to manipulate. Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites provides a tool kit designed to help you research environmental history, document evidence of human influence on land and the environment over time, and tailor that knowledge to new public engagement. It proposes a multi-disciplinary approach that requires expertise in the humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences to best understand space and place over time. It incorporates case studies of the theory and method of environmental history to explore how human goals take lasting shape in the environment – creating working environments, getting water, generating and harnessing power, growing food, traveling and trading, building things, and preserving natural landscapes. Features include the Interpreting the Environment Tool Kit to help you launch the good work of interpreting the environment: Raw Materials (the evidence): landscape, ecosystems, artifacts, and the built environment Preparation (methods): thinking like a naturalist/scientist; thinking like a historian; combining approaches Planning (envisioning the goal): proactive message, stewardship, sustainability Partnerships (sharing work): strength in numbers; allying across disciplinary divides; united in efforts to inform the public about their individual and collective effects on the landscape and the environment Potential: educating the public about people and places is part of a world-wide goal with the cumulative effect of saving the planet, one story at a time. A Timeline and Bibliographic essay round out the book’s resources.

Interpreting the Prohibition Era at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting the Prohibition Era at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Jason S. Lantzer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 0759124337

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Interpreting the Prohibition Era at Museums and Historic Sites chronicles the rise and fall of one of the greatest attempted reforms in American History. Why were Americans so worried about alcohol? Why did they seek to ban an entire industry? How did those involved in the trade react? How did repeal come about? How should we remember the "noble crusade"? Such questions are important, both for historians and museums who seek to interpret the Prohibition Era, as well as for the general public who wants to know more about the Roaring Twenties and how it continues to shape the United States today. This captivating guide will help interpreters explain the history of prohibition, its repeal, and its legacies. Case studies cover: · Breweries · Reformers · Women · Saloons, both before and after Prohibition · Gamblers and gumshoes This guide will help museum and history professionals make sense of a complex story, relate the history and legacy of political pressure groups, and help learners think about the era in new ways.