Public History
Public historians present, interpret, and help to preserve history in a variety of venues and diverse formats. Specifically, public historians strive to apply their historical skills, knowledge, and insights in public settings and for public audiences not often associated with history in an academic setting, such as archives, museums, historic sites, public and private agencies and corporations, and non-profit organizations, to name only a few.
Public History Opportunities
At Stephen F. Austin State University students have the opportunity to develop these public history skills in a number of ways. Located southeast of Dallas and northeast of Houston in deep East Texas, Nacogdoches is ripe with many internship opportunities. As the only university in the area with a public history program, students commonly find positions or opportunities to work with museums, archives, and historic sites, as well as to find work on preservation grants and with historical societies, among other things. Our professors are also intimately associated with the public history program and students are able to benefit from diverse classes and faculty expertise, ranging from memory, to the material world, to preservation, to commemoration, to cultural resources management, to public policy, to museums, to archives, to collections management, to oral history, to local history, and more. Put differently, our faculty members here at SFA are as diverse as the students they work with and are well qualified and eager to serve.
Public History Training
Stephen F. Austin State University's Public History Program strives to train students as historians - historians who deal with a passionate, engaged, and extremely diverse public audience. We offer broad training for practicing, presenting, and preserving history outside the traditional university or classroom setting. Students are trained in historical methods, with an emphasis on delivering historical scholarship in a variety of forms. Besides the many unique courses offered in the public history program, students are also trained in courses designed to enhance their history skills and knowledge, such as historiography and seminars. Students trained in public history often find jobs in such varying fields as archives and libraries, government agencies, National Parks, historic houses, living history sites, corporate consulting and history, historic preservation, urban planning, cultural resources management, museums, historical societies, documentary editing and film, and journalism, among others.
NCPH Meeting - Pensacola, FL - April 2011
On Wednesday the 6th of April four History MA students (Kaitlin Wieseman, Carolyn Whitsitt, Carolyn White, and Misty Hurley) and one History BA student (Cassandra Bennett who will be entering the Public History MA program at Middle Tennessee State University in the Fall) joined Drs. Perky Beisel, Paul Sandul, and Scott Sosebee along with Mr. Herman Wright (LongBlackLine.org) on a twelve-hour road trip from Nacogdoches, TX to Pensacola, FL. Thanks to the generous support of the East Texas Historical Association, the History Department, and Student Affairs, we were able to make this an affordable and extremely educational trip. We all had fun at the conference, met great people, listened to stimulating sessions, toured the posters and the town (including a dip in the Gulf of Mexico), and presented our papers.
Texas Council on Public History - Proposed Organization
Hello,
By way of introduction, our names are Perky Beisel and Paul J. P. Sandul, Associate and Assistant Professors of history at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) in Nacogdoches, Texas, respectively, and co-directors of the University's public history program. In our recent trip to the National Council on Public History's Annual Conference in Pensacola last April, we had the opportunity to discuss with some members of the Board of Directors their desire to start working more closely, via workshops and sponsoring events, with state-wide public history organizations. They then lamented such organizations in Texas and the southern US do not exist. We share their lament. Indeed, we know too well how dynamic and active public history practitioners and related organizations/institutions in Texas are and have been. This conversation and fact inspired us to try and launch a state-wide public history organization in Texas for our mutual benefit and support. We would like to create a Texas public history organization to enhance appreciation of historical heritage in Texas. Perhaps a rough draft of a mission statement we penned gets our point and objectives across more succinctly: "The Texas Council on Public History [suggested name only] is a consortium of history practitioners in the state of Texas who engage public audiences or work in history-related fields traditionally found outside of academia, from archives to consultation, cultural resource management, curation, interpretation, media, museums, oral history, policy advising, preservation, students and teachers, and many more. TCPH seeks to foster, facilitate, and coordinate efforts that enhance the preservation, interpretation, presentation, and management of Texas' unique heritage. It is an effective networking organization for all of Texas' public history practitioners, providing a forum for contact and discussion, mutual support, and the sharing of knowledge and resources. To support the promotion of Texas' history, TCPH's key programs and services include professional opportunities, including an annual conference; and a newsletter, including an active monitoring of legislation, keeping members informed and involved, information on relevant state and national news, and fostering cooperative action among Texas' history, heritage, and like organizations."
We are thus contacting you and a variety of Texas practitioners and organizations with diverse expertise, training, and focus to attend a gathering at the Fall meeting of the East Texas Historical Association (ETHA) in Nacogdoches, Texas on Friday, September 23, 2011 in the Rusk Room at SFA from 1:45-3:00 pm. It is Session VIII at the ETHA conference and entitled "Organizing a Texas Public History Association." Besides Drs. Beisel and Sandul at SFA, excitingly, others to preside and help facilitate discussion include Dan Utley and, possibly, Lynn Denton-both who likely need no introduction, but very well-known and respected figures in the world of Texas history and heritage. We also hope to have guest speakers from NCPH and the California Council for the Promotion of History (as it is a public history organization in a large state like Texas and thus in a good position to advise and relate with us) to speak to us via video/phone. We hope you consider joining us in what will hopefully be the beginning of the start to a valuable and needed organization in Texas. To help facilitate we have attached Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws for everyone to read over and serve as a point of fostering discussion at our meeting. To be clear, these are not set in stone. They are written only with the hopes of them serving as a basis for further discussion. We will of course change, amend, and/or edit them based on our discussion at the meeting. For information about the ETHA conference where our session will be held, as well as registration information and conference guide, etc, please visit http://easttexashistorical.org/v3/events/fallmeeting.htm.
If you have any questions about attending the meeting, viewing documents, or anything related, please do not hesitate to contact Paul Sandul at paulsandul@gmail.com or 916-955-0384. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing and talking with you soon,
Perky Beisel Associate Professor, History Department, Stephen F. Austin State University
Paul J. P. Sandul Assistant Professor, History Department, Stephen F. Austin State University