Who Owns History?

Every good public historian has asked the question “Who owns history?’. This is not an easy question to answer. As public historians we talk about shared authority. Simply speaking, shared authority is the idea that historians, museums, as well as all historical institutions should allow the public to interpret history without the “experts” imparting their views. In the late 1980s and into the early 1990’s there was a call for a “bottom up” approach to history. This humanistic approach to all aspects of history called all historians to think of the individual’s experiences throughout history as opposed to concentrating on major events and/or battles.

The problem with the idea of shared authority has been the rise of technology. The way we record, take and assess history has changed in just the past ten years. Far gone are the days of saving negatives and written documents. Everything is now digitized. Oral Histories are no longer transcribed but recorded and made into audio files. Most everything is being digitized. Digitized work can be shared worldwide which brings us back to the question, ‘Who owns history?’. These histories have passed through so many hands from the original to the historian and then to the public figuring out who it belongs to becomes an ethical question as well as a moral gray area.

It is through this shared authority we see a main difference between historians and public historians. Historians try to write while leaving as much emotion out of their subject matter when public historians are looking for the emotion in their history. This emotion will not only draw interest to your subject matter but it forces your audience to feel something. The more invested in the topic/exhibit/reenactment/ect the more information they will retain on the subject. This engagement is what public historians strive for.

What we also see is how much the public wants to be a part of history. This reemergence of public interest in history has encouraged historians to alter how they used to incorporate their audiences. No longer is society satisfied with reading a book and taking in knowledge. They want to experience their history. VR. video games, and reenactments are allowing the public to come face to face with history and see how they would react in tough situations of the past. This incorporation of digital history has helped public historians to streamline history to the consumer no matter their location.

Bibliography

Cauvin, Thomas. Public History: A Textbook of Practice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016.

Corbett, Katharine T., and Howard S. (Dick) Miller. “A Shared Inquiry into Shared Inquiry.” The Public Historian 28, no. 1 (2006): 15–38. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2006.28.1.15.

Filene, Benjamin. “Passionate Histories: ‘Outsider’ History-Makers and What They Teach Us.” The Public Historian 34, no. 1 (2012): 11–33. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2012.34.1.11.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Introduction.” The Public Historian 22, no. 1 (2000): 13–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/3379324.

Rosenzweig, Roy, and David Paul Thelen. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.