Making the Past Present

As I prepare to begin a PhD program in public history this fall, I’ve found myself thinking about how and when I first became interested in public history. This question is more difficult than it first appears, as I didn’t really know what public history was – and how it differs from academic history – for a long time. Looking back, my first exposure to public history was the summer before my senior year of high school, when I participated in the National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) pre-college summer program at the College of William and Mary and spent five weeks learning about the history of colonial America and the American Revolution in (some of) the places where it actually happened. The NIAHD program exposed me to many different aspects of public history, including material culture, interpretation at museums and historic sites, historic preservation, and public archaeology. At the time, however, I didn’t realize this.

My next major (and also unwitting) introduction to public history came when I was an undergraduate student. During the spring semester of my junior year, I took a class on Berlin, in which we delved into the city’s social, political, cultural, and architectural history. This was one of the first times that I seriously contemplated the importance of place when studying history as we peeled away at the layers of Berlin’s urban landscape, shaped by war and division. While taking this class, I also read a fascinating book, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Brian Ladd), that has proven to be very influential, as it introduced me to architectural history and questions of memory tied up with place.

As a side note, the Berlin class was paired with a short-term study abroad trip to (you guessed it) Berlin, which was a very formative experience for me as a scholar and also as a traveler. This was the beginning of my ongoing fascination with Berlin, which is one of my favorite cities in the world.

I have since realized that the Berlin class was the second beginning of my interest in public history, although, as with my experience at NIAHD, I did not recognize it as such at the time. This was largely, I believe, because I didn’t know what public history was. As an undergraduate, I was never given an introduction to public history in any of my history classes. If you’re wondering, the Berlin class was offered by the German department, which was always much more interdisciplinary by nature. During my senior year, my university offered an introductory public history course, but I didn’t take it. At the time, I was intimidated by public speaking, and I mistakenly believed that public history equaled public speaking (just to illustrate how little I actually knew about public history at the time). When I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, all I really knew was academic history, so that is what I initially pursued, until I finally realized my interest in public history and embarked on a new course.

I will write more about my public history journey in a future post. For the moment, I want to return to Berlin. As I said earlier, the Berlin class (and study abroad trip) was a highly formative experience; it was one of the five best classes I took as an undergraduate. I’ve long thought that, if I ever become a professor, I would love to design a similar class one day, centered on Berlin (or maybe London) and explicitly focused on memory, museums, and historic preservation in the urban landscape. Who knows? Maybe someday I will get to teach it.