It is an exciting time to be a public historian and a good moment to
join the National Council on Public History (NCPH).
Public historians and their work are everywhere these days. A public
historian was one of two historians recently to receive a MacArthur
Foundation “genius” Fellowship. Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
have just aired their latest creation, Prohibition, on PBS stations
across the country. Meanwhile, there are now more than 130 graduate
and 70 undergraduate public history programs in the United States and
abroad. Clearly, interest in our field is growing.
This fall is the time to be a part of NCPH. We have several major
initiatives underway which we invite you to join. A new draft Long
Range Plan will appear at www.ncph.org soon for comment. It commits
the NCPH to strengthening the public history community, sustaining
practitioners at different stages of their careers, fostering critical
reflection on historical practice, and advocating for history and
historians. Members and their efforts are always at the core of NCPH’s
internationally acclaimed journal, The Public Historian and the
quarterly Public History News. While work on these traditional
publications evolves, NCPH is preparing to launch a major new blog in
a few months to serve as the “digital commons” for the public history
profession. In one place we all will be able to learn from the best
ideas being discussed by the many constituencies that make up public
history. Also this fall, work continues on plans for upcoming annual
conferences, which are the collective expression of interests, needs,
and wisdom of public history practitioners.
Our 2012 Annual Meeting, in Milwaukee, held jointly with the
Organization of American Historians, will be a dramatic reunion of
traditional and public history approaches. I encourage you to
participate. Alongside a broad array of sessions, workshops, and
working groups, we will present signature events, such as a live
recording of the radio show, BackStory with the American History Guys.
All of us can learn something from the BackStory team, which so ably
interests a general audience in serious history.
I hope you will think about membership in our hardworking
organization. At its core, NCPH membership means participation in the
best scholarship, professional practice, teaching, and critical
discussion of public history. It also means strengthening your
connection to the wider range of individuals and institutions
dedicated, like you, to “putting history to work in the world.”
In these tough economic times, membership in NCPH is a sound
investment because of the professional connections, training, critical
expertise, and understanding of trends in the field it can provide.
Please visit www.ncph.org for more information about the benefits of
membership and the NCPH’s many programs and projects and join online
at http://ncph.org/cms/join-us/.
