Barbara Vasquez, Editor-in-Chief
Manhattan University (MU) has recently introduced its new public history minor to the history, political science and international studies department at the university. It is now the second minor offered in the history sector of the program.
The minor “introduces students to museum studies, archival practices, digital presentations, and other forms of applied history,” according to the course description on manhattanedu. “It trains them in how and why history content is presented to the public, whether in museums, through professional and social media, and in public spaces, in person and online.”
The minor was developed largely in part with Lydia Crafts, Ph.D., history professor at MU, who will be teaching the first courses for the minor to be offered in the fall. According to Crafts, the minor was developed due to the abundance of opportunity it could provide students.
MANHATTAN.EDU / COURTESY
“We wanted to connect students to opportunities to make use of the city, and to connect their work to the city,” Crafts said. “There are a lot of students, we noticed, who had an interest in working in museums, or archives, or these different cultural institutions, so providing a pathway for them, through their education, to develop the skills that are needed to work in these institutions [was of interest].”
The coursework for this class emphasized offering internships and hands-on, practical experience for students, found through alumni connections and university affiliations with different cultural institutions. This minor was designed with the intention of providing students who are interested in working in public history the experience needed to be more “marketable” for employers.
“We’ve noticed our students typically go into careers in education or law, but there’s a growing number of students who are interested in working in museums,” Crafts said. “So to provide more opportunities for those students to develop those interests, and put students more on the right career pathway as well.”
Molly Gilmartin, a junior history major, is just one student who is currently deciding on pursuing public history studies at the university. She serves as the current president of the history club at MU, attesting to her interest and commitment to the discipline. For Gilmartin, the announcement of the new minor was quite exciting.
“I was ecstatic to hear about the public history minor,” Gilmartin wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “I was especially excited because my goal after graduation is to go into museum studies, and try to work in the public history sphere. I am most excited for the opportunities for internships students may be able to achieve with this line of study.”
For Gilmartin, the public history minor offers a deeper way for students to look at history.
“Public history is another way to approach the pursuit of historical knowledge, but outside the traditional classroom norm,” Gilmartin wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “It comes in all forms ranging from museums, archives, national parks, or even historical films. Providing students with the opportunity to study public history adds another way of looking at history as a whole.”
The first class offered for the minor, History in Public, will cover a variety of subjects within public history, including how history is represented in public spaces, archiving materials, family history, history of the internet and oral history, according to Crafts. This class, and pairing minor, are not limited to only history students.
“We hope it won’t just be history students, but other students from different disciplines who might be interested in getting experience working in museums or these cultural institutions,” Crafts said. “Or even the learning skills of digital literacy in relation to the humanities, or archival work, whatever it may be. I think there’s a lot of transferable skills in some sense.”