| The development of public history practices to promote public awareness of history was traced through the movements that played dominant roles over time in establishing public history venues and practices. The elite historical society movement played a foundational role from 1877 to 1900 in collecting, preserving, and making accessible to the public, the documents, materials and objects of American history. The historic preservation movement between 1906 and 1966 stemmed from private initiatives to save and restore historic buildings and sites significant to American history, and government actions to protect archaeological treasures and natural parklands from destruction. Historic preservation practices and cultural resources management by the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and private entities were documented as major fields of public history. The heritage museum movement rose to dominance during a massive expansion of venues between 1960 and 1990, reflecting renewed public interest in local, state and national history. Issues and influences that shaped the public history practices and venues developed by these movements arose from the intellectual ideas of public history---national identity, public memory and cultural pluralism. The historic movements that promoted public awareness of history created a demand for professional historians trained in the modes and methods of preserving, representing, and interpreting history to diverse publics in a variety of venues. Partly in response to that demand, the public history movement of 1975--2000 established public history programs and courses in United States universities. This study examines the issues that confronted public historians in and out of academe. Recommendations addressed the need for grounding education in the humanities and training future professional public historians in modes and methods of communicating knowledge that promote public awareness of history. This work is uniquely important because the origins and development of public history in relation to public awareness of history have not been explored heretofore by scholars of public history. |
