Public History & Philly

  My name is Jeanette Bendolph and I am a MA student of Temple University’s Public History program. I received my B.A. in History and minors in Africana studies and Museum Studies from the University of Delaware (UD) in 2019. During my undergraduate career, I completed internships and research in the state of Delaware pertinent to my historical and career interest. My sophomore year, I interned at the Delaware Historical Society in which I created a program for junior high students to evaluate changes over time of Delaware’s laws of eminent domain, immigration, and segregation. The following year, I participated in UD’s Summer Scholars program in which I researched and crafted a PowerPoint which detailed the social and political climate of Victorian Era Britain for its Black citizens. As a senior, I interned at the New Castle Historical Society in New Castle, DE and researched, curated, and created an exhibition which detailed the early childhood development practices of Delawarean...

     [1] [2] M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska’s book History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s is a refreshing and perceptive examination of the changing manners in which history was taught, depicted, reenacted, and reflected upon in America from the 1950s to the 1970s. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows these shifts by presenting to her readers America’s earlier traditions to deliver history in a more distance and purely informational manner and America’s change in method which would incite emotions and provide more interactive ways to partake in historical settings [3] . What I found particularly striking and informative in her book was her inclusion of American television series which showed early reluctance to interact deeply with the past and the move of American television productions to present a more involved and sincere narrative of American history in later decades. For instance, she provides the ways in which early American shows such as The Twilight Zon...

  [1] In her book From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement , Andrea A. Burns documents the endeavors of African Americans to establish Black-owned museums in stride and motivated by certain sentiments of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Focusing primarily on four of the first African American museums in America named The DuSable Museum of African American History, The International Afro-American Museum (IAM), The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (ANM), and the African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP), Burns illustrates how these museums were created and run by African Americans. Some of the historical figures in Burns’ narrative include Margaret (Black artist) and Charles Burroughs, Dr. Charles Wright, and museum director John Kinard who out of grassroot movements and extreme effort formed and oversaw operations they saw fit for reconstructing the representations and presentations of African American history. Burns allows her r...

  Poly McKenna-Cress and Janet Kamien’s Creating Exhibitions provides it’s readers with an extensive and careful examination of what the process of creating museum exhibition entails as well as suggestions as to how to efficiently collaborate with others to create exhibitions. The reasoning in which the authors have for their process of exhibition creation and execution are backed up with actual exhibitions, experiences detailed by museum exhibition creators, and their success or hardships which ensued while taking on the exhibition creation process. I was happy that even though their book often states how important team member collaboration is for a successful exhibition process, Mckenna-Cress and Kamien advocate that the visitor is the most important collaborator [1] . This statement is such an important one because even in 2020, museums still struggle to put the desires and needs of their visitors at heart. It can be argued that a museum or historic site does not need to adhere ...

  The confrontation of uncomfortable but necessary historical topics which arise in present-day historic sites are offered in Brown, Gutierrez, Okmin, and McCullough’s article Desegregating Conversations about Race and Identity in Culturally Specific Museums . Here, the authors explain that in museums such as the Asian Art Museum and the Museum of the African Diaspora (both located in San Francisco, CA), museum educators struggle to determine which ways they can present museum exhibitions and historical discussions in a means to promote open and honest discussions without leaving out certain narratives or offending the museum’s visitors. One complaint that people held with the Asian Art Museum was its lack of interpretation upon how the objects of Asian origin were obtained, which would require museum educators to speak of colonization upon Asian nations which lead to these artifacts being held in California [1] . From what I understand, topics of colonization often make visitors o...

  The Oral History Manual by Barbara w. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan explores in a very descriptive light what oral history is, the ways that oral history contribute to academic and non-academic realms, and what the practice of oral history entails. Sommer and Quinlan also write of the differences between oral history and other historical practices and the proper procedures to both prepare for and conduct an oral history project. Some of the procedures written in the manual include how to secure adequate funding to pursue and complete an oral history project, the technology needed during the project’s interview process, the legality and laws present between the narrator(s) and interviewer(s), and other important information about oral history practices. What resonated with me throughout Sommer and Quinlan’s manual was the description of ethics in which historians and laypeople taking on oral history must follow, such as ensuring that no “defamatory” remarks are made about the narra...

  In Carolyn Kitch’s Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past , Kitch researches Pennsylvania’s steel industry from America’s Industrial Revolution era to the 21 st century to determine the ways Pennsylvania’s labor history is recalled today. Through a multi-disciplinary approach of research, oral history, and ethnography, Kitch discovers the passion and concern placed towards Pennsylvanian labor history and labor representation. Kitch found that by making history relatable, pertinent, and noticeable today, Pennsylvanian historical sites succeeded in capturing visitor attention. One site, the Heritage Discovery Center, created connections from past citizens to people today by allowing visitors upon entry to select a card presenting an immigrant whose story they could follow throughout the site [1] . With personal attention given to past Pennsylvanian immigrants, the museum succeeded in producing an interesting and sentimental way in which the public could not ...