Dwight T. Pitcaithley

Barbara Kingsolver and the Challenge of Public History

I HAVE ONE OF THE BEST JOBS IN THE COUNTRY. I am a public historian who gets to develop and help develop and influence educational programs that are seen and heard by roughly 160 million people annually. I get to work in and around 378 national preserves that constitute our National Park System, parks that when linked together form an American history textbook. The System contains pre-contact villages of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, sites that represent European exploration and colonization, Revolutionary Era places in Philadelphia and Valley Forge and Yorktown. It contains presidential places, womens history places, African American history places from slavery to Civil Rights. Much has been written about the differences between academic and public historians. I do not intend to engage that debate today except to elaborate on why I find the field of public history so fascinating and rewarding and challenging. The practice of history in public places, or in the