Bøger i Public History in Historical Perspective serien

Traces the transformation of antiques from family keepsakes to valuable artistic objects, examining the role of collectors, dealers, and museum makers in the construction of a new tradition based on the aesthetic qualities of early American furnishings. This book examines the role of Jewish dealers in promoting American antiques.

To preserve Scotland's unique antiquities and natural specimens, a Scottish earl founded the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1780. Now numbering twelve million objects, these collections formed the foundation for what eventually became the National Museum of Scotland. Alima Bucciantini traces how these collections have helped tell the changing stories of this country for centuries.

To understand how settlement histories are used to promote social, political, and commercial relations across national borders, Adam Hjorthen explores the little-known phenomenon of cross-border commemorations. He argues that scholarship on public commemoration should engage the shared and contested meanings of history across local, national, and transnational contexts.

West of downtown St. Louis sits an 1851 town house that bears no obvious relationship to its surroundings. Now the Campbell House Museum, the house has been subject to energetic preservation and heritage work. Heidi Aronson Kolk explores the complex and sometimes contradictory motivations for safeguarding the house as a site of public memory.

Traces the histories of the largest, most lucrative, and rapidly growing genealogical databases to delineate a broader history of the industry. As each unique case study reveals, new database and DNA technologies enable an obsessive completeness - the desire to gather all of the world's genealogical records in the interests of life beyond death.

While Britain and other countries have established national museums to nurture their seagoing traditions, America has left that responsibility to private institutions. In this first-of-its-kind history, James Lindgren focuses on a half-dozen of these great museums, ranging from Salem's East India Marine Society to San Francisco's Maritime Museum.

What happens when marginalized communities do not find their history in dominant narratives? How do they create a useable past to bind their political communities together and challenge their exclusion? In Clio's Foot Soldiers, Lara Leigh Kelland investigates these questions by examining 1960s and 1970s social movements comprised of historically marginalized peoples.