This week’s internship covered aspects of public history as discussed in the class. Dr. Murphree assigned readings covering public history which can be an ambiguous genre to approach within the field. A large portion of undergraduate classes at the University of Central Florida lack the distinction between a public and academic historian. As a current graduate student, it seems easier to identify what can be considered a public history project and an academic work. The students in the class seemed to reflect my own experiences within the undergraduate history program regarding identification of these two classifications. Some students were shaky on what the definition of public history meant. A student even reached out to me in my own office hours to inquire about it.
Dr. Murphree inquired students to discover core principles
of public history in an attempt to engage students with the topic. Students
identified components to public history such as audience, methodology, and
other aspects of the division. I noticed that the students began to understand what
the subdivision is and the manner at which professional public historians
differ from academics. Both divisions are trained in the same way, yet their
audiences and methodologies, for example, differ. Public history can reach a
greater audience than academic works due to the nature of them.
When I provided my own thoughts on public history, I discuss
my own thesis which researches public history projects such as Reddit and
YouTube. These sites allow for historians and non-academics to provide a new
methodology for providing historical knowledge. Computers, Visualization,
and History by David Staley reflected the message that writing prose does
not have to be historians’ primary methods for broadcasting their findings.
While Staley was mostly concentrating on visualization such as pictures,
statistics and graphs, sites such as YouTube or Reddit embody these new methodologies
that Staley discusses.
One lesson I’ve learned is that this internship and the
graduate program has instilled a refined technique of time management. Time
management is crucial when conducting an internship or attending graduate
class. The technique is allocating time frames for you to work on several things
at a time which is helpful for graduate work. Sometimes, you cannot dedicate
enough time to a particular book or article. The internship, in particular, has
helped me ascertain that it is crucial to know how to spend your time
efficiently and not waste it.
Overall, the internship has been going well. One particular
student continues to show up to office hours and has begun inquiring my
thoughts on subjects such as public history. I will share my lamentations with
Dr. Murphree that the class has to adapt with such a small number of students.
These lessons which I’ve discussed in previous blog posts remain valuable, but
the methodology of how we teach these classes could be tweaked. Much like Staley
advocacy for new techniques, historians and educators can find innovative means
of providing historical knowledge. Public history was, at one point, a new technique
that historians utilize for their findings.
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