Public History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Massachusetts boasts a rich network of museums, archives, historical societies, documentary filmmakers, and historic preservation agencies, as well as one of the top public research universities in the nation. Since 1986, the Public History Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has provided a vital link between the University and the Commonwealth's wide variety of institutions that preserve and communicate history to the public.
The mission of the UMass Public History Program is:
- To train graduate students to work on historical projects with a broad range of audiences and institutions, as well as to prepare them for entry level positions in museums, archives, historic preservation agencies and many other places that engage the insights and methods of historians.
- To provide historical services for area institutions and for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
- To advance, through research and demonstration projects, the theory of public history and how best to serve audiences for history outside the University.
Jessie Macleod curated the Newport Historical Society Loan Exhibit, 2011
Beyond the boarders of Massachusetts, the public history program has been active at national and international levels. Our students and faculty are currently engaged in projects as close to home as Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts, and as far afield as Germany, Ireland, and Lebanon.
The public history program prepares graduate students for a variety of positions in a range of settings. Course offerings regularly include: Landscape and Memory, Material Culture, Digital History, Oral History, Preservation Theory, and Museum and Historic Site Interpretation.
Places where alumni are currently employed include: the National Archives, the National Park Service, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, the Macmillan Group, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, and the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Internship sites in recent years have included: the Massachusetts Trustees of Reservations, Colonial Williamsburg, Monadnock Media, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.