Seminar in Historical Analysis (405-0-20)

Topic

Public History

Instructors

Daniel Greene
Daniel Greene has worked as a curator at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, and as President of Newberry Library in Chicago. Greene has curated multiple museum and library exhibitions, including Americans and the Holocaust, which opened at USHMM in 2018. That exhibition inspired The U.S. and the Holocaust, a documentary film directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein that premiered on PBS in 2022. Greene’s books include The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (Indiana, 2011). He’s also the co-author of Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North (University of Chicago, 2013), which accompanied an exhibition he co-curated at the Newberry Library. His co-edited (with Edward Phillips) book, Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2022.

Meeting Info

Harris Hall room 101: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course focuses on the field of public history and explores the many ways that museums, monuments, and historic sites present opportunities for the public to engage with the past. Readings address history's relationship to memory, as well as case studies that examine the politics of public history. We'll focus in large part on the ways that museums, monuments, and memorials become proxies for contemporary political debates.

Registration Requirements

Graduate Students Only.

Learning Objectives

Students will gain a deeper understanding of the many ways that museums, monuments, and historic sites present opportunities for the public to engage with the past. They will read and discuss compelling recent scholarship on museums, monuments, and memory.

Evaluation Method

Short response papers to class reading; book review; exhibition review; writing assignments based on individual research

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Prerequisite: MA or PhD History student
Add Consent: Department Consent Required