Historically Thinking

For the last few years there have been an increasing number of job ads by colleges and universities looking for professors who specialize in public history. Yet, curiously enough, public history is a discipline of history that comparatively few members of the public actually know about. And, often, even those people who are looking to employ someone who knows public history have a hard time explaining what public history actually means. With Al Zambone this week to define and explain public history is Thomas Cauvin. He is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which happens to be right in the middle of Cajun Country. He has been involved in many public history initiatives, including travelling and online exhibitions, and crowdsourcing projects. In 2016 Routledge will publish his Public History: A Textbook of Practice. A citizen of France, he earned his PHD in Italy, and has taught in France, Italy, Ireland, and now the United States. Have a listen, cher; it'll be a true bon temps. For Further Investigation -Cauvin, Thomas. Public History. A Textbook of Practice, London/New York: Routledge, (forthcoming 2016). -The Museum on the Move -History@Work -Evans, Jennifer. “What is Public History”, Public History Resource Center, 2000, http://www.publichistory.org/what_is/definition.html (accessed June 2014) -Meringolo, Denise. Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts, 2012. -Nick Sacco, Exploring the Past: the blog of a public historian

Between 1870 and 1900, the Congo River basin became "one of the most brutally exploited places on earth." Traders in slaves and natural resources; explorers; and builders of would-be empires entered it from the west, east, and north. They were Arab, English, Belgian, French, and even occasionally American. What they entered into was an ecosystem and culture dominated by the Congo River and its navigation, a complex world that was soon irreparably destroyed. Robert Harms in his new book Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa does not focus simply on the interlopers into the Congo, or what happened after they entered, but what existed before their arrival. Nor does he allow villains to be easily chosen; it is soon clear that even those with the best of intentions in the Congo ended up assisting in villainy. Robert Harms is the Henry J. Heinz Professor of History and African Studes at Yale University. Professor Harms has written on both African history, and on the slave trade from and within Africa.

It's a little surprising, perhaps, but the National Weather Service has some really great historical material on its website: Memorial Web Page for the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 From the Department of "It's really more interesting than it sounds"–John Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages Resources from the Library of Congress on Constitution Day

"Of all the ongoing debates over the Civil War," writes my guest Elizabeth Varon, "perhaps none has proven so difficult to resolve as the issue of Northern war aims." Some historians have emphasized, particularly in the last few years, the important point of consensus between many Republicans and Democrats that the Union needed to be saved. Others have emphasized the growth of the antislavery movement in the Republican Party as the force that gave coherence to the North's war effort. But each of these approaches, observes Varon, "focuses on only part of the broad Northern political spectrum." Varon's suggestion is that "deliverance" is the concept that unites all the different northern perspectives. Northerners believed that they were bringing deliverance to the South: to the poor whites who were economically controlled by the wealthy slaveholders; to a region blighted with chattel slavery; and to the enslaved themselves. And of course Southerners also believed in the narrative of deliverance, only they believed that they were delivering themselves from those who would take their property; and their chief war aim was to deliver the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland from Federal oppression. Elizabeth Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of numerous books; Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War is her most recent, and it's the focus of our discussion.