Public Historians at Work

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According to Dr. Stephen Vider (Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University), capturing feeling is just as important to public history as transmitting knowledge. Whether collecting an oral history or cultivating a museum exhibit, Dr. Vider emphasizes the ethical responsibility to honor people’s bodily and emotional responses to history. As he tells UH History graduate Timothy Vale (PhD, 2022) in their conversation recorded on May 6, 2022, valuing the full human experience has played a key role in shaping each of his projects. This includes the 2017 exhibition, AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism, at the Museum of the City of New York, which explored how artists and activists have mobilized domestic space during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Now, as the director of Cornell’s Public History Initiative, Dr. Vider teaches students that doing historical research with the public is more than an intellectual exercise, but a high stakes and even personal endeavor that elicits emotion and contributes to the contemporary world.

Learn more about Dr. Vider: https://history.cornell.edu/stephen-vider

Check out the Public History Initiative at Cornell University: https://phi.history.cornell.edu/ 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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If a medical institution’s mission is to make cancer a relic of the past, the archivist’s role is to collect, preserve, and make that history available. So says Javier Garza, Senior Library Analyst and Archivist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Historical Resources Center in Houston, TX. In his interview with graduate student Allison Anderson – recorded on November 19th, 2021 – Garza describes how he got involved in the dynamic and communal effort to document and digitally disseminate the development of the nation’s leading cancer center. Garza discusses the unique challenges of bringing medical archives and a robust oral history collection to the general public while balancing patient privacy and institutional transparency.

For more on MD Anderson's Historical Resources Center, go to: https://www3.mdanderson.org/library/hrc/index.html

To access “The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Project”: https://www3.mdanderson.org/library/hrc/interviews.html

Editing assistance of this episode provided by Dylan Allen. 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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There are many ways to produce public history, but one of the most unique publications comes from the University of Houston. Houston History magazine is a student-written and edited publication dedicated to the under-told stories of one of the largest and most diverse metropolitan regions of the United States. Join Dr. Debbie Z. Harwell (Instructional Assistant Professor of US History, University of Houston) and PhD candidate Caitlyn Jones for their November 8, 2021, conversation about a recent issue focused on Houston’s San Jose Clinic. For one hundred years, this clinic has provided medical, dental, pharmacy, and specialty services to low-income and uninsured individuals. Dr. Harwell and Jones discuss how the magazine has captured San Jose’s legacy and then expand their conversation to the process, challenges, and joys of working with undergraduates through this public-engaged medium.

To learn more about Houston History magazine: https://uh.edu/class/ctr-public-history/projects/projects/index2.php

Read Houston History magazine online: https://houstonhistorymagazine.org/

Find out more about 100 Years of Houston: https://uh.edu/class/ctr-public-history/news/hpm-shuart-100-years.php

Support the work of Houston History: https://giving.uh.edu/publichistory/

Editing assistance of this episode provided by Dylan Allen. 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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With debates about healthcare dominating the news, the past resonates all the more. American historian Dr. Ronit Stahl (Associate Professor of History, University of California: Berkeley) clearly illustrates this principle in her conversation with Dr. Mark Goldberg on February 11, 2022. Whether understanding the 2014 Hobby Lobby ruling about the birth control insurance mandate, the claim of religious hospitals to conscience rights and public funds, or the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops, Dr. Stahl reveals how history can help us ask better questions about the present. This is no mere academic exercise but one of service to the wider public, as Dr. Stahl demonstrates through her many meetings with community groups and military organizations, numerous op-eds, and even a 2018 amicus brief before the United States Court of Appeals.

For more on Dr. Stahl’s work, see https://ronitstahl.com/.  

Historians’ Amicus Brief, written with Jennifer Mittelstadt, for Plaintiffs in Jane Doe 2 v. Donald J. Trump, December 10, 2018.

 Editing assistance of this episode provided by Dylan Allen.  

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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Digital and Analog. Big data and Qualitative Research. Humanities and STEM. Activism and Academia. For some, these concepts may seem like polar opposites, but each is integral to the work of Dr. Merlin Chowkwanyun, a historian at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. In his conversation with Dr. Josiah Rector on Dec. 7th, 2021, Dr. Chowkwanyun details his varied career on the intersection of history, data, and health advocacy. From publishing online once secret documents from toxic chemical companies to contextualizing racial health disparities within the ongoing COVID crisis, Dr. Chowkwanyun lives out the values of public history and encourages other historians to enter the crucial policy debates of our time.   

Visit Dr. Chowkwanyun online at http://www.merlinc16.com/. 

Explore the millions of pages of previously classified documents on industrial poisons through Project Toxicdocs at https://www.toxicdocs.org/.

Read Dr. Chowkwanyun's latest book, All Health Politics is Local:  Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

Editing assistance of this episode provided by Dylan Allen.  

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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You might not think of a night in jail as a “nice time,” but for public anthropologist, Dr. Alexandra Arkhipova (Wilson Center, DC), her arrest in Russia in 2017 was both an opportunity for research and part of a long-standing tradition for public scholars within her country. In her interview with Dr. Alexey Golubev - recorded on March 23rd, 2022, - Dr. Arkhipova discusses the difficult work of collecting and preserving information under the oppressive regimes of the Soviet Union and Putin’s modern-day Russia. A self-described “anthropologist of crisis,” Dr. Arkhipova uses social media to crowdsource for people’s memories and eyewitness accounts of protest against the authoritarian government and the current war in Ukraine. She talks about how this work of gathering and archiving people’s diverse experiences becomes its own form of protest against governmental censorship and attempted control of the historical record.

For more on Dr. Arkhipova's work, see https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/alexandra-arkhipova.

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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In order to define, assess, and theorize what we do as public historians, we first need to know our own past as a field. So says Denise Meringolo, a distinguished professor of History at the University of Maryland: Baltimore County. In this final episode of Season 1, recorded on November 5th on 2021, Dr. Meringolo talks with Dr. Leandra Zarnow about her personal journey as an accidental historian and how this led to a discovery of the deep, radical roots of public history. Through their conversation, Dr. Meringolo highlights the unique challenges faced by practitioners engaging in social justice activism - from the temporariness of their projects to the emotive aspect of documenting community stories to their role in not only preserving but protecting the people they serve. This field is nevertheless grounded in what Dr. Meringolo deems a “crazy optimism” that public historians can truly promote change for a better future. 

For more on Dr. Meringolo’s work, see http://denisemeringolo.org/. 

Check out Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Archive Project at http://www.baltimoreuprising2015.org/. 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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***WINNER OF THE 2022 UH MEDIA AND MOVING IMAGE STUDENT PRIZE COMPETITION, CRITICAL CATEGORY***

In this special episode, Jovan Slaughter - a UH graduate student in Public History - tells the story of Cream Burger, a family-owned burger joint on the edge of the UH campus. Opened in the early 1960s by her parents, Beverly Greenwood talks about her family’s 60-year mission to feed their community throughout the many changes of Third Ward. 

This episode was researched and recorded by Jovan Slaughter for the Center for Public History at the University of Houston.

To learn more: 

Correa, Melissa. 2021. “Cream Burger in Houston’s Third Ward celebrates 60 years in business.” KHOU 11. 

If you are in Houston, stop by Cream Burger at 3481 Elgin Street and talk to Ms. Greenwood yourself! 

Interview with Ms. Greenwood recorded by Jovan Slaughter on April 8, 2021. 

Music provided by:

FreePD

Free Music Archive:

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

“Smooth Day” by Ketsa
“This Way for Joyous Street” by Ketsa
“Funky Garden” by Ketsa
“Blue Ones” by Ketsa 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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A history of sports can be a history of the United States. So says Dr. Frank Guridy, an American historian at Columbia University and author of the book, The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (University of Texas Press, 2021). In his conversation with Dr. Mark Goldberg on April 13, 2021, Dr. Guridy explains how issues of race, labor, gender, and politics materialize in the stadium, whether it is segregated teams under Jim Crow or singing the national anthem before a game starts. As such, historians can use popular sports to enter the public arena, telling untold and silenced stories of marginalized communities to wide audiences outside the university.

For more on Dr. Guridy's work, see https://history.columbia.edu/person/guridy-frank/ and Twitter @fguridy.

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph

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For journalist and oral historian Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, her mission is clear: to record the experiences and contributions of Latinas and Latinos within the United States. As she explains to Dr. Josiah Rector during their conversation on March 2nd, 2021, for too long have her people been underrepresented within primary sources and scholarship. After noticing this lacuna in histories about WWII especially, Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez set out to establish the Voces Oral History Center at UT Austin in 1999.    

Since then, this project has captured 1,250+ oral histories on themes like political and civic engagement, Vietnam, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez has learned valuable lessons about the process and technology for recording histories as well as how to best involve the public in this work.

Check out the Voces Oral History Center: https://voces.lib.utexas.edu/

See also the Voces YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSJD8CV0-mI

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph