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Museums, Monuments, and National Parks
Toward a New Genealogy of Public History
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
Series: Public History in Historical Perspective
256 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.70 in, 12 b&w illus.
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The rapid expansion of the field of public history since the 1970s has led many to believe that it is a relatively new profession. In this book, Denise D. Meringolo shows that the roots of public history actually reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources. Scientists conducting research and gathering specimens became key figures in a broader effort to protect and interpret the nation's landscape. Their collaboration with entrepreneurs, academics, curators, and bureaucrats alike helped pave the way for other governmental initiatives, from the Smithsonian Institution to the parks and monuments today managed by the National Park Service.
All of these developments included interpretive activities that shaped public understanding of the past. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home that grounded professional practice simultaneously in the values of the emerging discipline and in government service. Even thereafter, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to define and redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day, according to Meringolo, as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad.
All of these developments included interpretive activities that shaped public understanding of the past. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home that grounded professional practice simultaneously in the values of the emerging discipline and in government service. Even thereafter, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to define and redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day, according to Meringolo, as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad.
Denise D. Meringolo is associate professor of history and director of public history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
"A valuable contribution that illuminates the key role of the National Park Service in shaping the field--offered at a crucial time when public history programs are expanding, public sector support is waning, and the field is going through a period of redefinition. We need this book now."—Anne Mitchell Whisnant, author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History
"Informed and informative, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History is a work of seminal scholarship and a welcome addition to academic library American History reference collections and supplemental reading lists."—The Midwest Book Review
"In this richly researched book, the historian Denise D. Meringolo situates the birth of a new field--public history--decades before the postwar emergence of a recognized subfield. . . . Often marginalized or forgotten in recent histories of public history, the characters in Meringolo's story were central in shaping American relationships to the past."—The Journal of American History
"Meringolo has added an important layer of context to previous studies of development of the National Park Service. For that we are in her debt."—The George Wright Forum
"Meringolo . . . succeeds in expanding the existing communities' understanding of the discipline."—Nebraska History
"Meringolo is at her best in delineating the rise of public history with in the National Park Service during the 1930s. . . . Museums, Monuments, and National Parks is an important addition to the literature on the history of the National Park Service as a public history institution and of public history as a government job."—The Journal of Southern History
"Meringolo makes a solid case for re-envisioning the profession's roots. . . [the book] provides a far richer understanding of our professional heritage than has previously been available."—Indiana Magazine of History
"Meringolo's Museums, Monuments, and National Parks is compelling."—H-Soz-u-Kult
"Through painstaking archival research, Meringolo offers a revised genealogy of public history, specifically of the forms it took in the federal government. By looking back to how scientific exploration, geology, archaeology, and landscaper preservation paved the way for the hiring of professional historians in the federal government, she argues that public history is inherently interdisciplinary."—American Quarterly
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