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 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 - Graduate & Undergraduate
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. We are listed in the NCPH's Guide to Public History Programs. Here is the one-page pdf description of our program. In our academic program we strive to exceed the best practices as outlined by the National Council on Public History in its 2015 guide to public history education, the Public History Navigator.
We offer a MA track in Public History and we offer a minor in Public History at the undergraduate level. Yes, an undergraduate student may have history as the major and public history as the minor!!!
Good News!!! History Department Graduate Assistants are eligible for reduced tuition through SFASU's LEAP program, please contact us for more information.
Welcome to Fall 2021 - SFASU has returned to face-to-face courses, and more importantly for public history, lots of hands-on learning opportunities.
Highlighted Resources/Jobs/Internships/Opportunities/Conferences
- Humane Rescue Alliance Internship for Podcast Internships (2 positions winter/spring 2022, 3 months, paid!, remote work)
- Be sure to check out the latest museum, archival, interpretive and other jobs on Museum Savvy at https://museumsavvy.com/museum-jobs.html.
- The Inclusive Historian's Handbook (by NCPH and AASLH) is a free digital resource publicly available - entries are now published and more in the coming months: https://inclusivehistorian.com/.