Public History Weekly - PHW

16/11/2023

Time to say Goodbye to the management of Public History Weekly – PHW after 11 full years of weekly editorial work including intense 10 months of development, fundraising, preparation, and of course an initial invention. You see the very last issue under my management, ed. by Cord Arendes / Stefanie Samida in October 2023, editorially serviced by Moritz Hoffmann and Barbara Pavlek Löbl.

This work has started in autumn 2012 with rather critical observations on the academic journal landscape of that time, a specific idea, and new opportunities after my move from Germany to Switzerland.

A first funding application of 300’000 CHF was successful, thanks to the support of my university leadership at FHNW (Hermann Forneck first, later soon Sabina Larcher Klee with invaluable & reliable backing). Since then, year after year we had to care for financing. All in all an estimated amount of 1.2 million CHF were necessary to keep the ship afloat until today.

The conceptual idea, making it short, consisted of:

- open access
- collaboration
- weekly appearing
- multilinguality
- interactivity / open peer review
- full academic standards in terms of referencing and arguing and permanent text protection
- screen-reading friendly layout
- full social media embedding
- openess to a wider interested public
- equal and contract-specified partnership between the publisher house and the other funding institutions

Some of these characteristics may appear for you as self-evident and trivial, but they certainly weren’t that at all in 2012.

Read more: https://publichistoryinvienna.com/public-history-weekly/

26/10/2023

What was the colour of Queen Cleopatra’s skin? Does it matter? Netflix’s recent documentary-drama series about the ancient Egyptian queen has stirred ongoing debates around these questions and the way historical events and figures are portrayed.

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by Ehaab Abdou (Wilfrid Laurier University, )

Netflix’s recent docuseries about the ancient Egyptian queen has stirred ongoing debates around the way historical figures are portrayed.

26/10/2023

In the context of public history, gender representations are a crucial issue. Whenever history is displayed, performed, or staged publicly along with an explicit narrative about the past, notions of gender and gender stereotypes are staged and performed as well. Historical reenactments as a bottom-up, ephemeral, and performative practice are an interesting case in point to examine how practices of doing history and doing gender are linked.

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by Juliane Tomann (Universität Jena)

Historical reenactments are an interesting case in point to examine how practices of doing history and doing gender are linked.

19/10/2023

Virtual Reality Beyond the ‘Time Machine’ – A Manifesto

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by the X-MEM Project

Given the increased popularity of VR to provide access to the past, the discourse about its potentials and challenges needs to be intensified

19/10/2023

Paramount’s TV serial Yellowstone pictures the US American West through the story of the fictional Dutton family and their ranch in the state of Montana. Set in the present day, the show unfolds multiple plotlines negotiating the many conflicts and contradictions between tradition and modernity, between rural conservatism and neoliberal entrepreneurship, between a self-sustained life at the frontier and the politico-economic restrictions and regulations which endanger exactly this life.

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by Martin Butler (Universität Oldenburg)

The show "Yellowstone"'s overall storylines tend to reproduce the hegemonic narrative of settler colonialism.

12/10/2023

Where fleeting trends and the ever-changing pulse of popular culture dominate, the idea of erecting traditional monuments seems contradictory. Yet, an alternative approach to archiving emerges through the active participation of fans. Can fan archiving offer a unique entry point to understanding and preserving the historical dimensions of our present era?

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by Annekathrin Kohout ( )

Can fan archiving offer a unique entry point to understanding and preserving the historical dimensions of our present era?

05/10/2023

“Experience history.” A brief Internet search for these two keywords yields a wealth of results that highlight both the ubiquity and the breadth of this promise. Museums and city tours, theme parks and historic sites, living history performances and VR time travel – all of these forms of public history are advertised with the claim that history can be experienced.

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by Daniel Morat (Freie Universität Berlin, )

Public History sites often promise that visitors will be able to ‘experience history’, which has repeatedly been criticized.

05/10/2023

Today, no one has to “justify engaging with popular culture; instead, there may be pressure to justify oneself if not doing so.” This statement by Matthias Schaffrick, a specialist in German studies, is definitely true for cultural studies. However, what about history, history education, and public history? Given the multiple interactions between research and public discourses on a given topic: Are popular culture and historical culture ultimately just two sides of the same coin?

FOCUS MONTH: Historical Culture and Popular Culture

Editorial by Cord Arendes and Stefanie Samida (Universität Heidelberg)

Historical and popular culture play an important role in our understanding of the past and in the ways in which we remember and use it.

11/08/2023

Political Activism in and through Public History 2nd Public History Weekly World Conference 1-3 September 2023 Our hybrid conference at the famous Vienna Volkskundemuseum with renowned speakers representing public history... Read More ›

29/06/2023

Pre-1968, Northern Ireland history teaching displayed the content driven, rote learning characteristics of Mary Price’s ‘History in Danger’. We can only speculate as to how far partisan or inadequate history teaching contributed to division which exploded into violence.

Alan McCully (Ulster University) argues that whatever past grievances – real, exaggerated, imagined, distorted – were ingrained in social and political structures on each side of the community, history teaching did not do enough to challenge each side’s myths and partial truths.

Whatever past grievances were ingrained in social and political structures, history teaching did not challenge the myths enough.

29/06/2023

There is a tongue-in-cheek expression in Ireland used when members of British society behave in an overly imperialistic or superior manner, or in ways which bely any sense of propriety or sensitivity to Irish history and culture: “The Brits are at it again”. But how does a former colony depict its coloniser once given the opportunity to tell its own history? Colm Mac Gearailt (University of Galway) investigates this question.

How does a former colony depict its coloniser once given the opportunity to tell its own history in school books?

22/06/2023

It is difficult to say goodbye to the words that have constituted us as members of a national community, words that make us “feel at home with a significant other” when talking. What words come to the English, the Scots, and the Welsh when they are asked to summarize the history of their country up until the present in a couple of phrases?

Jocelyn Létourneau and Raphaël Gani (Université Laval) argue that these words are not trivial terms. Using them allows “John Bull”, “Sister Peg” and “Deffroad Cyrmu” to gently renationalize themselves while allowing their nation to strengthen itself in the subtlety of its verbal propositions.

What words come to the English, the Scots, and the Welsh when they are asked to summarize the history of their country?

08/06/2023

The Encyclopaedia Britannica infamously read in 1888, ‘For Wales, see England,’ revealing the lack of understanding of the cultural distinctions between England and Wales. In the context of history education, this depiction is still present.

Rhonwen Bruce-Roberts (Edge Hill University) discusses some of the obstacles to the teaching of Welsh history, arising from its linguistic and identity-related complexity, and draws attention to how little it is taught due to its somewhat tricky nature.

There are multiple obstacles to the teaching of Welsh history, arising from its linguistic and identity-related complexity.

01/06/2023

In 2017, scenes of the Irish Famine in the TV drama ‘Victoria’ shocked British viewers who were largely unaware of this catastrophic event occurring when Ireland was still part of the Empire. In 2018, Conservative MP Pritti Patel suggested the UK use the threat of food shortages in Ireland as leverage when Brexit negotiations stalled, leading to public outcry in Ireland. Both reactions highlight a lack of understanding about the historical complexity of British–Irish relations both publicly and politically.

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by Lindsay Janssen (Radboud University) and Caitriona Ni Cassaithe (Dublin City University)

The Irish Famine, a catastrophe which resulted in large scale loss of life and emigration, signalled a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations.

01/06/2023

FOCUS MONTH:

The ‘British’ Isles: Complex Histories or Simple Geographies?

In their editorial to this month's issue, Arthur Chapman and Caitriona Ni Cassaithe argue that naming has often been thought of as a kind of magic, as if in knowing something’s true name, one controls it. Naming appropriates, it locates the thing named in a language and universe of meaning and doing so often excludes others and the differing meanings their namings might make. Namings can also have histories – much ink and much blood has been spilt over names. In the editorial, they discuss the term “the British Isles”: is it simply a geographical term or does history complicate things?

Is it possible to separate geography from history and what role do place names play in positioning the things they name politically?

25/05/2023

History is an important factor in tourism. Historians and history education researchers have recognised and critically considered this issue. But how do those responsible for tourism view matters? “Public History Weekly” asked Marcel Perren, the director of tourism in Lucerne, a world-famous tourist destination in Switzerland.

Interview by Peter Gautschi and Jasmine Steger (PH Luzern)

with Marcel Perren (Luzern Tourismus)

PHW interviewed Marcel Perren, the director of tourism in Lucerne, a well-known tourist destination in Switzerland.

25/05/2023

The development of an imaginary reflects, not without paradoxes, the specificities of a space and its history. The Alps are no exception: they, too, have highlighted the distinctive features of their Helvetic homeland. Their physical, geological and biological nature first asserted and then safeguarded a political and social entity in which tourism underwent unprecedented development from the early 19th century. In this process, the local populations have been asked to help maintain the illusory belief that nothing has changed.

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by Laurent Tissot (University of Neuchâtel )

National Swiss history means the ideological, political and institutional points of reference which created an Alpine model of tourism.

18/05/2023

White fragility inhibits the responsible practice of public history in Mississippi blues tourism. Once touted as a force for racial reconciliation, the Mississippi Blues Commission abandoned its original goals under Republican Governor Haley Barbour, excluded African Americans from the decision-making process, and embraced more exclusive public history practices, which promote the erasure of African American history and obscure any connection to contemporary injustice.

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by Tyler DeWayne Moore (Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, Prairie View A&M University)

White fragility inhibits the responsible practice of public history in Mississippi blues tourism, as T. DeWayne Moore shows.

11/05/2023

In India, cultural tourism has a big potential for development given the diversity of sites and experiences the country has to offer. Conscious publicity campaigns like ‘Incredible India’ are aimed at highlighting the richness of Indian traditions. Indian tourism, primarily reliant on domestic numbers, is also making efforts through infrastructure projects and publicity to attract inflows from abroad. In this, the role of heritage becomes very important. However, how heritage and historical narrative are instrumentalised in this context needs to be reflected on.

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by Shraddha Bhatawadekar (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenburg, Germany) and Sanaeya Vandrewala (Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, )

In India, cultural tourism has a big potential for development given the diversity of sites and experiences the country has to offer.

11/05/2023

Through the decades, former battlefields and sites associated with memories of the Great War have become tourist attractions. At the same time, the often overlapping reasons for visiting war memorial sites have changed, affected both by the political, cultural and social context, as well as by transforming travel habits and the evolving public remembrance of WWI.

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by Elisa Tizzoni (Università di Pisa , )

This article analyses the shifting meanings of tourism at WWI sites by studying the example of the province of Trento in the Italian Alps.

04/05/2023

John Pimlott, the British historian, identified the “migration of holidaymakers to the sea, the countryside, the mountains” as one of the most characteristic features of modernity. It has shaped mores and fashions, turned villages into large cities and created entirely new industries. This diagnosis is not really new— it dates from 1947.

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by Hasso Spode (Historisches Archiv zum Tourismus (HAT))

This contribution critically outlines History Tourism Research development and structures, its strengths and weaknesses.

04/05/2023

Nowhere is so much history produced and used by the public as in tourism. History appears in tourism marketing, in travel guides, on site at buildings worth visiting or in museums, on guided tours and on many other occasions. Tourism is one of the largest service industries, has future growth potential and will continue to produce and use history. So is public history in tourism a success story?

FOCUS MONTH: Public History and Tourism – A Success Story?

Editorial (EN/DE) by Peter Gautschi (PH Luzern ) and Jan Hodel (FHNW)

Tourism is one of the largest service industries, has growth potential and will continue to produce and use history. Is public history in it a success?

27/04/2023

In recent years, museums and heritage sites have started to propose and implement game experiences in both their collections and exhibitions, and in their websites or mobile apps. This proved essential for expanding the museum experience and allowing them to stay “open” after closing time, which was particularly important during the Covid pandemic. Nevertheless, this gamification has often been superficial – confined to a coat of fresh paint applied to renew canonical public engagement practices.

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by Igor Pizzirusso (Novecento.org, )

Museum gamification is often confined to a coat of fresh paint applied to renew canonical public engagement practices.

20/04/2023

When in 2016 Battlefield 1 was released, many voices in Italy raised, asking to recall the game, partially set on the Italian front during WW1: according to the National Alpine Trooper Association it would be disrespectful towards the hundred of fallen on Mount Grappa. As if to say: don’t play with collective memory.

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by Raffaele Guazzone ( )

When in 2016 Battlefield 1 was released, many voices in Italy raised, asking to recall the game, partially set on the Italian front during WW1.

17/04/2023

Talking about divisive memories means touching the core of the contemporary society, which is characterized by various opacities and gaps in recent history (the second half of the twentieth century), by distrust of official institutions and reconstructions of events perceived as linked to power, by the epistemological crisis of postmodernism regarding the relationships between truth, language and reality. Historical narrative, especially as it is presented in the media, is also affected by all these elements. The video game medium, with its increasingly differentiated ways of “playing with history”, is thus inserted as a major actor in this scenario.

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by Francesco Toniolo (Università Cattolica, NABA, )

Talking about divisive memories means touching the core of the contemporary society, which is also reflected in historical video games.

14/04/2023

A warm and thankful welcome to the new member of our Advisory Board:

Prof Julia Wells (Rhodes University, Makhanda).

More information:

Prof Julia Wells (Rhodes University) is a member of the Advisory Board of Public History Weekly

13/04/2023

A warm and thankful welcome to the new member of our Executive Board:
Dr Jimena Perry (Iona University)!

Together with Moritz Hoffmann she is the contact person for early career authors (authors before doctoral exam).

More information:

PHW editor Jimena Perry is a Latin American Scholar specialized in Colombia.

11/04/2023

A warm and thankful welcome to the new member of our Advisory Board:
Prof Gabriel Di Meglio (from University of Buenos Aires and from National History Museum of Argentina)!

PHW Advisory Board member Prof Gabriel Di Meglio is Director of the National Museum of History of Argentina and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires.