Public Art & Public History
Historic Trappe
This paper examines Mt. Pleasant in New York, an estate where a crossroads of voices existed during the American Revolution. Due to the demolition of the house one hundred years later, the house and its inhabitants—a gardener and his wife, British Generals James Howe and Henry Clinton, prisoners-of-war the Baron and “Mrs…
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)…
Session on grantwriting in the Humanities for postdoctoral fellows transitioning into not-for-profit work…
Le Centre Sheraton Montreal
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…
University of Johannesburg
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…
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…
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?