Academic, Public and Popular History

Associate Professor Michelle Arrow, Macquarie University

Headstart to Extension 2015

Outline1. Defining the fields and their purposes2. Who are their intended audiences?3. How do different historians communicate?4. Controversies5. An ANZAC case study

But first….All historians are interested in the ‘whole human past’ (Curthoys and McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read)

History is ‘a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.’(E.H. Carr, What is History?)

Histories will differ according to their purpose and audience…

And also…• Academic, Public and Popular history are discrete

categories• BUT – they also overlap• Many historians work across these categories as

well as within them• Many academic historians conduct analysis of

popular histories• Public history is an academic discipline as well as

a practice

What is Academic History?

• Academic historians aim to create new knowledge about the past – to innovate, to push the discipline further

• They seek to construct historical interpretations or arguments about the past– New archival sources– Application of new theories to the past (eg postcolonial,

gender etc)– New approaches to the kinds of sources used (eg social

history, cultural history, gender history)

Defining Academic History• Academic historians take part in a scholarly

conversation with historians, both past and present• Publishing in specialised, peer-reviewed outlets –

academic journals, scholarly presses• What does ‘peer-review’ mean? – evaluation of

academic work by others working in the same field• See this explainer: https

://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-peer-review-27797

• (Windschuttle – did not submit work to peer review)

Some academic historians

Prof Joan Beaumont, Prof Marilyn Lake, Prof Bill Gammage

What is Public History?• Public historians seek to interpret the past for broader

public understanding, usually with an emphasis on primary sources and especially material culture

• Public history involves historical research, analysis and presentation ‘with some degree of explicit application to the needs of contemporary life’ (The Public Historian editorial policy)

• National Council of Public History (USA): ‘public history describes the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world’ http://ncph.org/what-is-public-history/about-the-field /

• Hilda Kean ‘public history [is] … a practice which has the capacity for involving people as well as nations and communities in the creation of their own histories.’

(The Public History Reader, Kean and Martin (eds) 2013)

• ‘Public history not only reflects the history of the community it seeks to serve, but the very history of that community will shape the nuances of what is understood as public history by that community.’ (Dr Robin McLachlan)

http://www.publichistory.org/what_is/definition.html

• ”[Michael Frisch] contends that what differentiates public history from academic history is its focus on audience."

(Stephen L. Reckon, "Doing Public History: A Look at the How, but Especially the Why," American Quarterly Volume 45, Issue 1 (March 1993): 188.)

• Public historians work with and for the general public.• Public history is still underpinned by historical research but

its audience is wider than academic history• public historians work in museums, galleries, archives

interpretive sites, commemorative plaques, reenactments, heritage assessments, the media (documentaries etc), and public policy.

Some Public Historians

Lorena Allam, Dr Lisa Murray, Dr Stephen Gapps

What is Popular History?

• The forms and practices through which history is transmitted in culture (Jerome de Groot), often via popular culture

• Can take a huge variety of forms – political discourse can be a form of popular history, everyday understandings of the past are a form of popular history

• Is much more driven by interests of the audience (hence dominance of military history as a subject of popular histories)

• Popular histories can be commodities – part of a history ‘marketplace’: popular history books (including those for children), docudramas, historical films, novels, videogames, documentaries, television programs (including reality TV eg. 1940s house), experiences, social media eg facebook pages

Defining Popular History• Probably the place where most people find out about the past:

history as entertainment, history as leisure

• Popular history is history that seeks first to entertain, to tell compelling narratives about the past for a broad audience

• ‘Popular history is history, simply in a different form to that of its academic counterparts’. Elizabeth Norton, http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/popular-vs-academic-history/

• Where are the limits of this category?

Some popular historians

Peter Fitzsimons, Peter Weir

Clare Wright (a rare academic historian who ‘crosses over’ into public and popular realms)

2. Who are their audiences?2.1. Academic Historians

• Academic Historians: most seek to speak to other academics; publish in journals (available only through subscriptions); audiences for their books tend to be small (500-2000 copies)

• Historians publish in different journals depending on who they want to ‘speak’ to

• Selecting your topic means you are selecting your audience• Some communicate their work more broadly: as expert

‘taking heads’ for the media, writing for websites that ‘translate’ academic research like theconversation.com (see: https://theconversation.com/au/topics/writing- history)

Results from the surveys Australians and the Past (Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, published in ACH: Australian Cultural History 22, 2003) and The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, 1998 Colombia University Press)

Historical activities undertaken by participants in the last 12 months (could list more than one)

US Aust

Looked at photographs with family or friends 91% 88%

Taken photographs or videos to preserve memories

83 74

Watched movies or television programs about the past

81 84

Attended family/school reunion 64 56

Visited museums or historic sites 57 55

Read books about the past 53 56

Participated in hobbies relating to the past 39 33

Conducted genealogical research 36 69

Written a journal or diary 29 25

Participated in a group devoted to studying or preserving the past

20 15

Results from the surveys Australians and the Past (Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, published in ACH: Australian Cultural History 22, 2003) and The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, 1998 Colombia University Press)

Trustworthiness of sources of information about the past

Aust (%)

Museums 56

Academic historians 33

Family stories 23

Non-fiction books 20

Eye-witnesses 16

newspapers 15

High-school teachers 14

Historical movies/TV 12

Radio programs 7

Media figures 3

Politicians -39 (!)

2.2 Public Historians• Public Historians: audiences include the general

public, government, policy advisors, community groups, children, schools, parents.

• Accountability is slightly different – most public historians work for governments, cultural institutions dependent on government funding, or commissions

• Public historians have to demonstrate they are reaching certain audiences (and generating new ones) to guarantee funding, etc

2.3 Popular Historians• Popular Historians seek to communicate to a

general audience, but perhaps in more emotional ways than public historians

• Popular historians want to engage with story-telling, to inspire passion, anger, nationalism, sentimentality

• Many popular histories are aimed at audiences often neglected by academic histories: family historians, women, children

3. How do these historians communicate?

3.1 Academic historians• Academic historians: primarily though the written

word. Writing tends to be formal, favours argument over engaging emotions, footnotes!

• Academic historians also write newspaper articles, give public lectures and conference papers, and teach to communicate their research

Academic histories

3.2. Public Historians

• Public Historians can communicate their work in a range of forms: apps, walking tours, public lectures, radio features, museum displays, interpretations of historical artefacts, public programs, live tweeting historical events (eg. #Dismissal1975), events (eg Jacqui Newling @ Sydney Living Museums ‘the cook and the curator’ blog http://blogs.hht.net.au/cook/about/ )

• usually connected to institutions in some way

Public histories

3.3. Popular Historians• Popular historians: can communicate through non-

fiction and fiction (and tend to blur the lines between the two)

• Popular history events like ‘Camp Gallipoli’ – communicating an historical narrative

• Popular historical narratives appear in many places in our culture, from film, television, social media, books for children, history ‘blockbusters’ (eg Peter Fitzsimons has sold more than 250 000 copies of his book Kokoda)

Popular histories

4. Controversies• Some suspicion and resentment exists

between academic, public and popular historians – but all are locked in a symbiotic relationship

• Historical understanding in Australia is produced by the interplay between public, popular and academic history (as ‘Australians and the Past’ survey, and Anna Clark’s work on ‘ordinary people’s history’ shows)

Points of debate• Does popular history ‘dumb down’ history, reducing the past’s

complexity for the sake of entertainment?• Does it reduce the past to a set of tidy stories rather than

uncomfortable truths?• Does it mislead audiences through falsifying the past (eg.

historical films)? • (for a critique of popular history see:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/aug/26/history.celebrity)

• A great critique of The Imitation Game http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/20/the-imitation-game-invents-new-slander-to-insult-alan-turing-reel-history

Points of debate• Yet – public and popular histories can

introduce an audience to the past, and make them curious to discover more (which might bring audiences to academic and public histories)

• They can resonate in a charged political moment and raise awareness of the history of present day injustice (eg Selma, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Secret River)

R: Scene from Selma (2015)

Below: students from Howard University protest the shooting death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/08/14/ferguson-dont-shoot-howard-university

http://blacklivesmatter.com

Amy Davidson on Selma http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/selma-fair-l-b-j?mbid=social_facebook

Academic and Popular Histories• Popular historians are often subject of scorn and criticism from

academics and vice versa• Popular histories are usually built on the work of academic historians• Paul Ham: ‘’Let us not assume, of course, that academic historians

want their work to be read. Many do not. Many seem to harbour an abhorrence of mass approval. To be popular in certain ivory towers is the kiss of death. They have little to fear in this regard. The deadening verbosity and sprawling sentences of the worst examples of academic writing render them incomprehensible to the mortal reader.[…] most academic historians presume to judge popular history as if they know best, and almost always according to their faculty's standards.’

• http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/human-factors-20140320-353nd.html

Academic and Popular Histories• Academic historian Paula Michaels:• ‘the path of popular history is closed to most historians

because of the very subjects of their investigation. No amount of finesse with the written word would have put my first book, on the history of medicine and public health in Soviet Kazakhstan, on the shelves of Dymock’s. The publishing of popular history is driven not by how scholars write, but by what readers are willing to buy.’

• https://theconversation.com/what-is-academic-history-for-24795

5. An ANZAC case study• Historians are interested in public and popular

histories for the meanings they attach to the past (and then to see people’s reactions)

• Anzac day this year offered a chance to observe this process up close…

Anzac Live, social media avatars communicating their experiences in ‘real time’

ANZAC 2015• How did all of these competing forms of history

produce the meaning of Anzac Day 2015?• Australians sharply rejected what they perceived

to be attempts to commercialise Anzac (Zoo Weekly, Camp Gallipoli, ‘Fresh in our memories’ etc)

• Also failed to watch the drama series that offered new takes on the Gallipoli story (compared to Weir’s Gallipoli – his film has set the template)

ANZAC 2015• Yet people turned out in record numbers to Dawn

services and marches• Academic historians raised questions about our

obsession with Gallipoli and these were given voice in documentary productions

• Many historians suggest that our affection for Anzac is closely tied to family history, to the emotional meaning of the day (fed by popular histories)

• Social media avatars etc fostered emotional connections with the past

• Public, popular and academic histories play very different roles in our culture

• All produce different kinds of historical meaning and understanding (we should try to work out what kinds of understanding they produce, and on their own terms)

• Academic historians contribute to these fields in many different ways

• The intellectual advances of academic historians do shift popular understandings of history – but it can take a long time!

• Academic historians need to be able to communicate with different audiences – but not always and not necessarily at the same time

Questions?I am happy to email a copy of these slides to you if you are interested (just be sure to attribute them correctly if you use them) –

Email: Michelle.Arrow@mq.edu.au

My research & teaching profile: http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/mhpir/staff/staff/dr_michelle_arrow/

Further Reading:• Jerome de Groot, Consuming History (2009)• Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath, How to Write

History that People want to Read (2009)• Hilda Kean and Paul Martin, The Public History

Reader (2013)• Anna Clark ‘Ordinary people’s history’, History

Australia, 9 (1), 2012• Jorma Kalela, Making History: the Historian and

Uses of the Past (2012)