Public Historians are Something More than Nice
I went to numerous conferences this year. It was a nice perk of being a fellow at the Collaborative for Southern Appalachian Studies . Sharing my work on participatory cultural memory, I was on panels with literary theorists, social workers, psychologists, planners, musicologists and geographers. Traveling outside my academic "home" of public history was a learning experience for me. I love my sub-discipline and have long been a booster for public history as a rich community of practitioners and scholars. When one of my students attended her first National Council on Public History annual meeting a few weeks ago in Indianapolis and declared of attendees, "I can honestly say these were the most supportive people I have ever met in my life," my reaction was, "Yes - of course. That is who we are ."