Joanna Wojdon, Dorota Wiśniewska: Public in Public History

Abstract

What do public historians mean by putting the word ‘public’ in front of ‘history’? When, in 1978, Robert Kelley formulated his well-known definition of modern public history, this seemed rather unproblematic. Public just meant ‘outside academia.’ Public historians, in other words, had to reach out to a public that was already somewhere out there, beyond the walls of academia. More than four decades, many history wars, and many academic reflections on public history practices later, the editors of this volume are less sure. Public in Public History wants to explore “the ways people perceive, respond to and influence history-related institutions, events, services and products that deal with the past,” in a multinational and transnational perspective.