HIST 547: Contested Heritage: Making, Shaping, and Fighting Over Public History

The past—the received wisdom, values, and experiences that define a society’s heritage—takes a wide array of forms. Museums and museum exhibits, debates over the nature and placement of monuments, controversies surrounding school textbooks, the role of history in the entertainment industry (including theme parks, film, historical re-enactment, and video games), and historical symbols all form part of the tapestry of public history.

This course seeks to explore how these different forms of history writ large shape our collective understanding of the past by celebrating, contesting, and exploiting elements of history, playing on a sense of nostalgia, and by connecting to a sense of collective identity.

This is a synchronous course that meets on Thursdays. The exact meeting time will be determined based on the availability of teachers who register for the course.

Please review the course syllabus for full course information.

This is a Full Semester course. Participants may register for one Full Semester course OR one course each in Fall I and Fall II.

Related Courses by Institution
HIST 594 Who is an American? (Winter/Spring 2021)
HIST 598 Studies in Segregation (Summer 2021)
HIST 547 Contested Heritage (Fall 2021)
HIST 512 Civil War & Reconstruction: 1848-1877 (Winter/Spring 2022)
HIST 598 Environmental History (Summer 2022)