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‘Where are the Dinosaurs?’: Reflections on Public History at the Museum of Jurassic Technology
by Tom Smith – @TomEtesonSmith What connects the obscure lives of neurophysiologist Geoffrey Sonnabend and opera singer Madelena Delani? Are these people even real? Is there really an elaborate miniature engraving of the Crucifixion on that seemingly ordinary fruit stone? Are we supposed to take these heroic portraits of the dogs of the Soviet space programme…
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Finding Yourself in the Groves: Reimagining Representation at California Citrus State Historic Park
By Megan Suster The unofficial mantra of Riverside, California by the beginning of the twentieth century was ‘Citrus is king!’ Starting with Valencia oranges in the California missions in the southern half of the state, and further catalyzed by the Bahia Navel orange that came to town in 1873, the citrus industry became central to…
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Conflict, Memory and Reconciliation: ‘The Vietnam War’
By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) The recent success of The Vietnam War, a television documentary co-directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, shows the enduring legacy of the conflict in popular memory. Broadcast as a ten-hour series in the UK on BBC Four and originally aired with an even longer running time on PBS, the series…
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A Captive Audience?: Prisons as Public History
By Tom Smith (@TomEtesonSmith) Wandering the corridors of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, it’s difficult not to feel a chill down your spine. The paint peeling from the walls, the crumbling brickwork, and the abandoned operating theatre, complete with a giant broken surgical light, all contribute to a disconcerting sense that you are on the…
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A cracked voice…
Writer Graham Palmer (@GP_writer) explains how he’s using music to explore the past in his exciting collaborative project, Cracked Voices. Warning: my history is suspect. It is fake news. I am not a historian. But I am fascinated in the way we are all complicit in fashioning stories, in interpreting our own lives and those of others…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 