Temple University Libraries recently hosted a talk with Dr. Steven Lubar as part of their Beyond the Page series. The conversation, facilitated by Temple’s own Dr. Seth Bruggeman, centered on the idea of public humanities, the challenges facing contemporary museums, and the role of technology vis-a-vis museums and public humanities.
As Bruggeman observed, Steven Lubar has had an “incredible influence on how Americans understand the past” and the ability to make accessible to a broad audience complex problems and ideas. He spent 22 years at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History, developing some of their most significant exhibits including Engines of Change (1986), The Information Age (1990), and America on the Move (2003). He has written several books and many essays dealing with American history and material culture, including History from Things: Essays on Material Culture (1993). In his current role as Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University, Lubar is helping shape the next generation of historians and museum personnel.
Bruggeman described Lubar’s influence on him as a young student – through an essay in which Lubar put for the idea that “technology is politics by other means” – which sparked his interest in material culture studies. He went on to add that Lubar “has remained on the forefront of writing about technology and how it shapes what historians do and how we can use it to reach broader and broader public.” In his discussion Lubar focused a great deal on the ways in which technology can be employed in the field of public humanities.
The conversation began with the question: What does “public” mean and why do we care about it? Lubar described the notion of “public” disciplines as those that initiate and rely on conversation, that invite audience participation, and which break down traditional notions (and sites) of expertise. He described the field of public humanities as “public history plus” – a broader, more inclusive program of study that incorporating elements/concerns of an array of disciplines that serve the public, including history, anthropology, archeology, folklore studies. It is part-public history, part-museum studies, and part-some other things which in combination reflect the evolving needs and concerns of twenty-first century museums. Lubar observed that the museum and the way that people think about history are constantly changing and that students need to be prepared for the challenges ahead. The public humanities field provides the flexibility necessary to meet these challenges, accommodating a diversity of fields, technologies, and interests.
Referencing a recent New York Times article on digital technology and the humanities, which suggested that the “next big idea in language, history and the arts [is] data,” Lubar discussed the role of technology in the field of public humanities. He described “digital” as a “tool” suggesting that it is “another way of doing your work” which fosters new ways of thinking. Further, the use of technology is not something that should be avoided because it is mechanical or difficult, but used as another tool for understanding and outreach. That the field of public humanities accepts and uses new media and digital technology seems to be one of its greatest strengths, creating a generation of individuals comfortable with using technology as a tool.
Lubar described a community history project by Brown students which employed flicker to display photographs and solicited responses from community residents to build its archive on the Fox Point neighborhood. Here, technology (along with more traditional oral history techniques) was used to create a collaborative exhibit which explored the evolution of a neighborhood in relation to the University. Further, the “Faces of Fox Point” exhibit was developed as a workshop for local middle-school students, introducing them to oral history and photography “as documentary sources” and allowed them to add their own work to the exhibit. In the “Faces of Fox Point” we see how technology can be used to democratize curatorial input and expertise, engage its audience through participation, and invite conversation between scholars, students, and the community. It also suggests It reflects the best aspects of the public humanities and also suggests a broadening of the idea of what museums are and what they can do.
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