November 2023
Material Cultures of Preservation, Transformation, Erasure, and Memorialization
What would it look like for sites of public memory, memorialization, and preservation to act as places of justice, community, and care? What kinds of feelings do these places and things engender? Joy, rage, mourning, exhaustion, hope, love? This session examines the dynamics of public space, acts of preservation, and places and things of memory through the lens of community, examining moments of failure and erasure alongside moments of love and solidarity. Penn State Harrisburg graduate student Jeremy Boorum considers…
Details »Monumental Developments: Contemporary Approaches to Commemorative Public Art
Breaking (Bad) Glass: Remaking Commemoration at Yale University The sound of breaking glass in what was then called Calhoun College at Yale University on June 13, 2016, signaled the death knell for that college’s name and highlighted the university’s reticence in addressing school history and its problematic relationship to the city in which it resides. The city provides the university with much of its service staff, who work across campus—a campus which exists as intertwined with downtown New Haven—in positions…
Details »January 2024
Material Matters: It’s in the Details
Presence and Absence in Pennsylvania: Carved Head of Captain John Carlton by John Fisher, c. 1786 Inside a mid-20th century car dealership-turned-local history museum is the representation of an indigenous man. He is carved from the trees that gave name to “Penn’s Woods.” These were eighteenth century woods inhabited by an intersection of peoples speaking different languages: Algonquian, English, High German, and Low German. They each built their architecture in their own image. Few remnants survive. The architecture of white…
Details »March 2024
April 2024
Beyond Tunnel Vision: Recovering the Hidden Stories of the Transcontinental Railroad
The National Park Service is reimagining how the agency tells the complex story of the Transcontinental Railroad at Golden Spike National Historical Park and other historic sites in the American West. Responding to longstanding absences, the project team seems innovative ways of documenting, preserving, and interpreting labor, environmental, and indigenous histories of the TCRR (among other topics). The working group will bring together scholars, educators, interpreters, cultural resources experts, and other partners to discuss current trends in TCRR scholarship and…
Details »Public History in a US Presidential Year: An International Conversation about the 250th Anniversary
The run-up to the U.S. presidential election is in full swing. Due to the highly-charged, difficult, and sometimes dangerous path of democracy in recent years, both in the US and abroad, the role of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is critical to consider. What can this commemoration be used for? Who or what is considered revolutionary, and from what perspective? Against the backdrop of a presidential election, what role can the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American…
Details »May 2024
October 2024
Presence, Violence, Absence, and Heritage: Exploring Indigenous-Settler Interactions across Centuries of Pennsylvania History
Presence, Violence, Absence, and Heritage: Exploring Indigenous-Settler Interactions across Centuries of Pennsylvania History Chair/Commenter: David Horst Lehman, Westminster College “A Little Valley’s Hopes of Prosperity and Preservation Amid Chaos: Swedish Incorporation of English Imperialism in the Delaware Valley and the Decline of Lenape Power Before the Arrival of William Penn: 1669-1682” Cole Mellinger, Independent Scholar “Those Abandoned People”: Extralegal Violence and the Construction of Indian Policy on the Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1754-1768” Sarah Donovan, College of William & Mary “Presence and…
Details »November 2024
Creating a Disturbance: Interventions to Historical Monuments and Statues
Movements such as #Rhodes Must Fall and #Black Lives Matter have had an important impact on art in the public domain, leading to a far greater critical sensitivity to the histories of people and issues commemorated in historical monuments and statuary than was hitherto often the case. But the “falling” of statues and monuments commemorating individuals and events associated with problematical ideologies and practices has not been the only outcome of this abhorrence. Of importance also has been a critical…
Details »March 2025
NCPH Working Group: Decolonial Approaches to America 250
Decolonial Approaches to America 250 Facilitator: Rebecca Amato, Illinois Humanities 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, a document that announced to the world that thirteen British colonies in North America had formed into a unified, sovereign nation. Preparations are underway to commemorate and celebrate “America 250,” and public history and humanities organizations are already developing guidelines for approaching the event. This working group plans to develop alternative guidelines that center a…
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