Center for Public History 2012-13
As we begin a new academic year, the Center for Public History looks forward to a yet another year of transformation and collaborative history making. Most notably, we bid farewell to Dr. Martin Levitt, who has led our widely renowned archives training program since 1995. Marty, who will be staying on as librarian of the American Philosophical Society, has trained hundreds of archivists, many of whom work in Philadelphia and many more beyond. His imprint on our program will be deep and lasting. We encourage those of you who have studied with Marty to share news of your accomplishments and to extend thanks for his many years of service. Although the archives program will be on hiatus during the 2012-13 academic year, we look forward to introducing its next phase, which should be in place by fall 2013.
Creative partnership is a key theme of this year’s classroom programming. During fall 2012, Dr. Seth Bruggeman’s graduate seminar in material culture is collaborating with Drexel University’s Historic Costume Collection to mount an exhibit during spring 2013. The collection’s curator, Clare Sauro, will organize the exhibit using research compiled by Bruggeman’s students, each of whom will study a particular piece of clothing associated with Philadelphia’s past. The center has also entered into a collaborative partnership with Temple Contemporary, a project of the Tyler School of Art to re-imagine the social function of art. In coming semesters, we will assist in curating a series of living exhibits on campus wherein artifacts from some of Philadelphia’s most significant historical collections will be conserved in public. These installations will occur alongside speaking events and classroom projects that explore how historical meaning is made across a range of cultural contexts.
Finally, the center continues to work at the leading edge of public history. Our digital history graduate seminar, which was the first of its kind in Pennsylvania when it debuted in 2011, will return this spring. We are also proud sponsors of the second annual Philadelphia Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp), which took place at the American Chemical Society during September 28-29. Considering how successful our public history graduates have been in the digital humanities job market, we look forward to expanding even further into this exciting new field.
For more information, please contact Seth Bruggeman, director of the Center for Public History (scbrug@temple.edu) and consult http://astro.temple.edu/~scbrug/PublicHistory/PublicHistory.html