Public History
Digital History has revolutionized the possibilities for public history projects
Exhibits have transformed both in content and delivery due to the ever-expanding possibilities digital technology offers.
Visitors have come to expect more interaction and visually exciting content that informs them and stretches their imaginations even further.
Smart phones have brought history into our personal spaces in podcasts, apps, games, walking tours, and other entirely new forms of public history.
Public history meets digital sources meets entertainment in new popular uses.
Public History for Broadcast Television
Digital History has led to an explosion of interest in genealogy made possible by the increasing availability in digital format of census, birth, and death records, along with newspapers.
Researcher and Guest Historian
Who Do You Think You Are?
The popular celebrity genealogy documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are?, has spawned tremendous interest in the United Kingdom among the population in re-creating their family genealogy. Since premiering in October of 2004, British and international viewers have watched celebrities learn about their ancestors through archival documents and by visiting the places where the documents are found and where they lead. Gripping tales of the Holocaust, of working in almshouses, of fortunes lost and won, secret families, and kingly roots introduce the public to the ways in which historians work and the evidence they use to reconstruct the past. Public interest has created a new, strong demand for governments to make more records available in digital format for the public to use.
My work and appearance on the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?
Because of my expertise in the textile industry in New England, I was contacted by the documentary production team to work as a historical consultant on Episode 7, Season 16 (2019) when the preliminary research indicated that celebrity Sharon Osbourne's family had worked in textile mills in Fall River, Massachusetts. The production team relied on me to interpret the documents, conduct further research, provide contextualization, find further primary source documents, locate digital photographs, and develop the narrative script.
Later, I was invited to appear in the show as the guest historian in the long, final segment. British celebrity Sharon Osbourne, known for her brutal honesty and colorful language, is a tv talk show host, former judge on The X-Factor and America's Got Talent, a manager in the music industry, and is probably best known for the MTV reality tv show, The Osbournes, with her rock-star husband Ozzy Osbourne. I prepared her in off-camera sessions to understand and contextualize the documents and to process the historical narrative unfolding. Her popularity in Britain led to a high viewing audience.
The Paper Chicken or the Digital Egg:
Which Came First?
Initially I used digital sources - including census, church, newspapers, and labor records - from which to analyze, interpret, and create a narrative. Some of these digital sources are readily available to the public, others were digitized by the research team specifically for me to be able to work with them 3,000 miles away.
Through the magic of television and international flight, we later went to those original archival sources where I could present and explain them to the celebrity. Filmed in digital format, this informative public history project aired in high definition and is available on CD-rom.
Filmed at the Fall River Historical Society
Fall River, Massachusetts
Gloves are required for handling these 150 year old payroll and accounting books and they must be laid without pressure on the spines. Digitizing allows an archive to share documents and artifacts without the risk of damage from misuse.
Explaining the Source
The Account Books of the Troy Mill held information about Sharon Osbourne's ancestors who immigrated to America from England during the U.S. Civil War only to face low wages, unsteady work, and squalid company housing. These records are not easily understandable to someone without expertise working with these types of records and knowledge of the context and history.
Filmed at Newport RI
We used digital copies of birth records and death records for this segment. Without expertise, some of this would be hard to understand. Filmed in a boutique hotel among the mansions of 19th century tycoons, Sharon was moved by the economic inequities of both the past and present.
Death Records
Sharon learned from me that her great grandmother was the only child out of 7 to survive the terrible poverty and living conditions as mill workers in Fall River in the 1860s and 1870s, most of whom succumbed to tuberculosis made worse by their situation. Her great grandmother returned to Britain.
Here is a clip from the BBC episode with part of Maura's appearance with Sharon Osbourne, whose ancestors moved from England to Fall River, Massachusetts during the Civil War and the Great Cotton Famine desperately seeking employment and recruited with false promises by the Fall River millowners. After most of them die, two of them move back to England where Sharon is eventually born.
Interestingly, my participation in this project on Fall River, while seemingly a distraction from my research on Lowell, provided me with new insight on my own topic that will have a strong impact on my final manuscript.
Digital Records and Genealogy:
The Great Democratization of the Archive or its Downfall?
Democracy
Traditional archives are often elite spaces that require appointments, letters of entré, training in handling precious documents and artifacts, and money to travel around the world to view them.
Digital archives democratize access making them no longer exclusive to academic specialists.
However, commercial paywalls and other barriers remain creating new hierarchies of class to access them.
Users
Users of digital history records are no longer primarily academic historians. They are ordinary people learning about their ancestors, students conducting research, businesses creating brands, travel writers, journalists, bloggers, filmmakers, and more.
The lack of expertise and ability to contextualize a digital historical artifact is problematic and can lead to false understandings and claims and even deliberate misuse and misrepresentation.
Creators
Modern technology allows for so many types of archival materials to be digitized without damage to the originals.
Experts might still need to view originals in the traditional archive setting.
Questions arise over which collections should be digitized and whether decisions have been made that interpret or distort their digital representation.
The reduction of hands-on use benefits the longevity of the archival materials and radically changes the nature of the archive and the archivists' job.
Public History as Edutainment:
Is that a good thing?
Public history is a service of sorts, bringing history outside of books and academia to enrich the public, inform them, and empower the citizenry. It does not always have to be in a museum setting, in a traditional documentary, or in public spaces. It can accomplish these things by being entertaining without losing authenticity and historical context. Without the participation of trained, credentialed historians the methods and interpretation can lead to the misinterpretation of sources and to false narratives.
The BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? walks viewers through document discovery - both digital and traditional - and offers context, narrative, laughs, and tears. It works best when trained historians are part of the production team from the beginning and all along the way. There are spinoffs around the world, but many have not replicated the professional historical approach as well as the original UK version. It has played an important role in increasing public support for government funding of more digital archives and making them available for free to the British public.
Public History and Heritage for Children
An appreciation for history and heritage begins with young people whether at home, in the school, or in public history offerings. Applying theories and methods of pedagogy to create age-appropriate and engaging exhibits, programming, events, and activities is a field of its own. I have engaged with young people and found them to be highly interested and and even instinctive historians when the approach is geared to their ages and abilities.
Public History Projects aimed at youth with which I have been involved include:
Director of American Studies for Kids
National History Day Judge
Ellis Island Field Trip and curriculum
Global Flat Stanley
A.S.K. - American Studies for Kids in Zurich
A.S.K. was a non-profit organization which offered a unique program aimed at engaing American children living overseas in American history, culture and civics through hands-on active engagement. Founded in 1999 by Susan Riedo who brought me in as a teacher and to develop the curriculum, which I revised to conform to U.S. standards, using the history education guidelines for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When Susan left Switzerland, I became the Director in charge of running the program, curriculum, teacher training, administrative tasks, parent liaison, community outreach, legal contracts, and financial administration. We operated for about ten years and were located at the Freie Gymnasium Zürich (FGZ).
A.S.K. Zurich
The focus of A.S.K. was on active learning and learning by doing in a fun, culturally diverse environment. Attention to cultural diversity, multilingualism, and neurodiversity of a very diverse group of children with multiple, complex identities, some struggling in their new environment. History and A.S.K. became a way for many of them to process their identity, heritage, and life as an expat.
Types of active and historical learning included:
Mock Trials
Election Simulation
Readers' Theater
Heritage dancing
Creating and playing history-themed gameboards
Short plays, music videos
Scavenger hunts
Historical Reenactment
Heritage Art
Public history projects and events work best when qualified historians with an expertise in the subject matter are brought in at the conceptual phase. This is often not the case. Museum exhibit designers, filmmakers, artists and the like consult historians only later in the project, if at all. Not only is it a missed opportunity for valuable input, the stimulation of ideas and themes, but it helps to prevent factual errors and the repetition of false narratives, mythologies, and exaggerations. For local topics, both academically-trained historians and local, antiquarian amateur historians should be part of the initial collaboration, since they both bring something important to the table.
"I Ring the Bell"
Heritage Art installations are not merely sites for commemoration, learning, pondering, inspiration, and beauty.
They can also be sites for activism and community building.
On August 18, 2020 women around the globe joined the women of Tennessee in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tennessee Legislature's ratification of the 19th Amendment, solidifying women's right to vote in the Constitution of the United States of America. A multigenerational group of Swiss and American women joined together in Zurich, Switzerland in a simultaneously ringing of the bells with their sisters in Tennessee. Gathering at the site of the life-size bronze sculpture "Frau" (1928), itself a protest piece, by Swiss feminist artist Alis Guggenheim (1896-1958), we commemorated, shared stories, and lamented the lack of freedoms for many people around the world. I spoke on the work of Swiss sculptor Alis Guggenheim, the intersectionality of Women’s Rights, and the fight for the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
"I Ring the Bell" August 18, 2020 Zurich, Switzerland
"Frau" by Alis Guggenheim (1896-1958)
Heritage Art in the Park
Historian and Consultant
National Endowment for the Arts
Public Art in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1996
I was a paid consultant for the an installation of public art during the creation phase for award-winning artist and sculptor Ellen Rothenberg. I generously shared with Ellen not just my Master's thesis on working women's voice in the labor newspaper The Voice of Industry during its residence in Lowell but also my primary archival research notes on the newspaper and Lowell's mill girls. The result was a permanent installation of public art focusing on the radical voice of some Lowell workers and their fight for fair wages, shorter hours, and improved conditions during the antebellum period of the nation's history and of Lowell's rise as an industrial city.
Image by Maura Doherty, 2019
Industry Not Servitude!, permanent installation, National Historical Park, National Endowment for the Arts, Department of the Interior, National Park, Lowell, Massachusetts
Rothenberg is now Faculty Research Fellow at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
Image by Maura Doherty, 2019
Image by Maura Doherty, 2019
Image by Maura Doherty, 2019
Image by Maura Doherty, 2019
Museums, Temporary Exhibitions
Museum Consultant
Some of the museum projects I have been involved with:
Boott Museum, Lowell National Historical Park, "Deindustrialization"
"Made in McClean County," McClean County Historical Society, Bloomington, IL
Tours, On-site Interpretation
Giving on-site interpretation is a rewarding and challenging experience, as well as a public service.
Without proper research and training, tour guides are known for giving inaccurate information and perpetuating urban legends and myths. We need more investment in proper training, but ultimately their information is only as good as what historians produce.
V.I.P. Tours Zurich
I give individualized tours of Zurich, Switzerland for V.I.P. personnel of the Zurich Film Festival and guests of C.E.O.'s and multinational firms.
Heritage Tours Ellis Island
When the National Park at Ellis Island first opened there was no room in the budget for on-site interpretation nor any audio guides. I filled that gap for private fundraising groups and organized some student and group tours. I was privileged to be part of one woman remembering her unusual stay at Ellis Island, accidentally detained there for a prolonged period aged 13 years old and traumatized by the event. Without this historian guiding her through, her recall would never have been the same. Her testimony and story was a moving experience for both of us, and the few who witnessed it.
Lowell National Historical Park
Maura Doherty, Park Ranger, Interpretation, GS-4, Seasonal 1986 and 1987, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, MA
worked the first National Folk Festival when Lowell was first chosen to host it
worked detail for the visit of Prince Charles when he visited the LNHP
appeared in costume as a mill girl and operated a power loom for a PBS Documentary on the Industrial Revolution filmed on location at Lowell
Oral History as Public History
The Working City Oral History Project, Lowell, Massachusetts. I received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to conduct oral history interviews with people who lived in the city of Lowell who could shed light on its period of deindustrialization. Conducted oral history utilizing then cutting-edge digital radio-broadcast technology for archival quality storage. Trained at Columbia University’s Center for Oral History Summer Institute by prize-winning producer and historian Charles Hardy.