Another Audience

In his article, Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Progress, Robert Kelley defines public history as the following:

"In its simplest meaning, Public History refers to the employment
of historians and the historical method outside of academia: in
government, private corporations, the media, historical societies
and museums, even in private practice. Public Historians are at
work whenever, in their professional capacity, they are part of
the public process. An issue needs to be resolved, a policy must be
formed, the use of a resource or the direction of an activity must
be more effectively planned-and an historian is called upon to
bring in the dimension of time: this is Public History."


In the remainder of the article, Kelley explains the origins of public history as historians' efforts to reach a new audience--employers!  According to Kelley's explanation, public history was created, taught, and propagated in order to find jobs for academic historians. This is but one more option for an answer in our search for an audience in our seminar called "Public History."  The audience could be employers--reminds me of one of the audiences in the Enola Gay controversy--stake holders.  In that situation, the stake holders are like the employers of the museum--they provide funding and therefore get a say in what the museum produces.  Similarly, in the case of employment, the graduate students in history must adapt to the market in order to get jobs--and this involved finding ways to use history in various areas in order to get a foot "in the back door" as Kelley puts it.

That public history derived from a lack of jobs for academic historians makes me think of the consistent problem between scholars and their public--seems public history as a discipline grew from this problem--being an academic historian wasn't necessarily the best way to succeed, so graduate programs found an alternative for their students--an alternative audience--employers that would maybe help historians reach their original audience, the public, in a new way.