Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Kevin M. Levin
Publisher: Interpreting History
ISBN: 9781442273696
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites surveys how museums and historic sites approached challenges during the Civil War sesquicentennial (2011-2015). In doing so, this book offers museums and history professionals strategies to help shape conversations with local communities.

Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Kevin M. Levin
Publisher: Interpreting History
ISBN: 9781442273696
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites surveys how museums and historic sites approached challenges during the Civil War sesquicentennial (2011-2015). In doing so, this book offers museums and history professionals strategies to help shape conversations with local communities.

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Kristin L. Gallas
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0759123276
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
This book moves the field forward in its collective conversation about the interpretation of slavery—acknowledging the criticism of the past and acting in the present to develop an inclusive interpretation of slavery.

Searching for Black Confederates

Searching for Black Confederates PDF Author: Kevin M. Levin
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Max A. van Balgooy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0759122806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
In this landmark guide, nearly two dozen essays by scholars, educators, and museum leaders suggest the next steps in the interpretation of African American history and culture from the colonial period to the twentieth century at history museums and historic sites. This diverse anthology addresses both historical research and interpretive methodologies, including investigating church and legal records, using social media, navigating sensitive or difficult topics, preserving historic places, engaging students and communities, and strengthening connections between local and national history. Case studies of exhibitions, tours, and school programs from around the country provide practical inspiration, including photographs of projects and examples of exhibit label text. Highlights include: Amanda Seymour discusses the prevalence of "false nostalgia" at the homes of the first five presidents and offers practical solutions to create a more inclusive, nuanced history. Dr. Bernard Powers reveals that African American church records are a rich but often overlooked source for developing a more complete portrayal of individuals and communities. Dr. David Young, executive director of Cliveden, uses his experience in reinterpreting this National Historic Landmark to identify four ways that people respond to a history that has been too often untold, ignored, or appropriated—and how museums and historic sites can constructively respond. Dr. Matthew Pinsker explains that historic sites may be missing a huge opportunity in telling the story of freedom and emancipation by focusing on the underground railroad rather than its much bigger "upper-ground" counterpart. Martha Katz-Hyman tackles the challenges of interpreting the material culture of both enslaved and free African Americans in the years before the Civil War by discussing the furnishing of period rooms. Dr. Benjamin Filene describes three "micro-public history" projects that lead to new ways of understanding the past, handling source limitations, building partnerships, and reaching audiences. Andrea Jones shares her approach for engaging students through historical simulations based on the "Fight for Your Rights" school program at the Atlanta History Center. A exhibit on African American Vietnam War veterans at the Heinz History Center not only linked local and international events, but became an award-winning model of civic engagement. A collaboration between a university and museum that began as a local history project interpreting the Scottsboro Boys Trial as a website and brochure ended up changing Alabama law. A list of national organizations and an extensive bibliography on the interpretation of African American history provide convenient gateways to additional resources.

Civil War Memories

Civil War Memories PDF Author: Robert J. Cook
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Why has the Civil War continued to influence American life so profoundly? Winner of the 2018 Book Prize in American Studies of the British Association of American Studies At a cost of at least 800,000 lives, the Civil War preserved the Union, aborted the breakaway Confederacy, and liberated a race of slaves. Civil War Memories is the first comprehensive account of how and why Americans have selectively remembered, and forgotten, this watershed conflict since its conclusion in 1865. Drawing on an array of textual and visual sources as well as a wide range of modern scholarship on Civil War memory, Robert J. Cook charts the construction of four dominant narratives by the ordinary men and women, as well as the statesmen and generals, who lived through the struggle and its tumultuous aftermath. Part One explains why the Yankee victors’ memory of the “War of the Rebellion” drove political conflict into the 1890s, then waned with the passing of the soldiers who had saved the republic. It also touches on the leading role southern white women played in the development of the racially segregated South’s “Lost Cause”; explores why, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had embraced a powerful reconciliatory memory of the Civil War; and details the failed efforts to connect an emancipationist reading of the conflict to the fading cause of civil rights. Part Two demonstrates the Civil War’s capacity to thrill twentieth-century Americans in movies such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. It also reveals the war’s vital connection to the black freedom struggle in the modern era. Finally, Cook argues that the massacre of African American parishioners in Charleston in June 2015 highlighted the continuing relevance of the Civil War by triggering intense nationwide controversy over the place of Confederate symbols in the United States. Written in vigorous prose for a wide audience and designed to inform popular debate on the relevance of the Civil War to the racial politics of modern America, Civil War Memories is required reading for informed Americans today.

Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Julia Rose
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0759124388
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites is framed by educational psychoanalytic theory and positions museum workers, public historians, and museum visitors as learners. Through this lens, museum workers and public historians can develop compelling and ethical representations of historical individuals, communities, and populations who have suffered. It includes various examples of difficult knowledge, detailed examples of specific interpretation methods, and will give readers an in-depth explanation of the psychoanalytic educational theories behind the methodologies. Audiences can more responsibly and productively engage in learning histories of oppression and trauma when they are in measured and sensitive museum learning environments and public history venues. To learn more, check out the website here: http://interpretingdifficulthistory.com/

Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Kevin M. Levin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442273704
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Public historians working at museums and historic sites focused on the Civil War era are tasked with interpreting a period of history that remains deeply controversial. Many visitors have strong connections to historic sites such as battlefields and artifacts as well as harbor strong convictions about the cause of the war, its consequences and the importance of slavery. Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites surveys how museums and historic sites approached these challenges and others during the Civil War sesquicentennial (2011-2015). In doing so, this book offers museums and history professionals strategies to help shape conversations with local communities, develop exhibits and train interpreters. With the ongoing controversy surrounding the display of the Confederate battle flag and monuments, there has never been a more opportune moment to look critically at how the Civil War has been interpreted and why it continues to matter to so many Americans. Each chapter is written by a professional public historian currently working at a museum or historic site. They cover topics such as: Building relations with the public How specific museums interpreted the war and overcame challenges of location, audience, funding How the National Park Service and Georgia Historical Society approached commemorating important anniversaries

Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Marc K. Blackburn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442239751
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
While the lessons of the past are equally important today as when they first occurred, the trouble lies in making them accessible to modern-audiences. Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites provides a guide to turning those important American military moments into relevant and captivating experiences. The book acts as a primer for those unfamiliar with academic trends of the last forty years. Through current interpretive methods and case studies, readers will gain an understanding of how to take this information and create programs, interpretive media, outreach strategies, and mission goals that are relevant to the public and the institution charged with serving them.

Interpreting Sports at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting Sports at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Kathryn Leann Harris
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538103184
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Interpreting Sports at Museums and Historic Sites provides a step-by-step guide for museums and historic sites developing an interpretive plan inclusive of sports.

Interpreting Science at Museums and Historic Sites

Interpreting Science at Museums and Historic Sites PDF Author: Debra A. Reid
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538172763
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Interpreting Science in Museums and Historic Sites stresses the untapped potential of historical artifacts to inform our understanding of scientific topics. It argues that science gains ground when contextualized in museums and historic sites.