Archive for the ‘Public History’ Category
Stirring up old leaves, long settled: Willie McGee, family history, and good storytelling
Last Friday, while waiting to depart for Charleston, S.C. to visit my brother, I was listening to All Things Considered. Nothing too unusual for five o’clock on a weekday, until I heard Bridgette McGee-Robinson’s story, of an enduring curiosity and quest for answers regarding her grandfather, Willie McGee. In 1951, in the small town of [...]
May 12th, 2010Fighting for a country in which you have no rights…
This may sound more like a description of a totalitarian state, a lawless nation in remote Africa (or urban Africa), or maybe a Soviet-era Eastern European country. I’ve just been learning all about the atrocities suffered on the German-Russian front of WWII in Dan Carlin’s “Ghosts From the Ostfront” podcast series, and how many of [...]
November 12th, 2009Decatur Street, 2009: Lessons in Atlanta’s 1906 race riot
For the first half of my history senior seminar class, we had assigned readings–articles from the Georgia Historical Quarterly–that we discussed for their knowledge and arguments but also for their technical structure and research methods. Because the ultimate goal of the course is our own senior theses, we were using these as models for what [...]
October 13th, 2009Museum studies, week 3
Journal entry, which is explained in the previous post, for week three of Museum Studies. Discusses two articles we read to prepare for class discussion– one about the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and the other about the history of history museums and historic preservation in the U.S. Both great topics. Also a blip about my [...]
September 7th, 2009Museum studies and the Tuskegee Airmen
This fall I am part of a team that is curating an exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen for KSU’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education. The exhibit will be on display Nov. 17 – February, and then will begin to travel to schools for possibly the next ten years. That’s a project that turns into [...]
August 30th, 2009