INTRO TO HISTORY COMMUNICATION

Three credit-hour course, 12-14 weeks

History today is communicated through a wide array of formats and across a growing variety of media platforms. Audiences include policy makers, federal, state and local officials, educators, students, journalists, funders, pundits, commentators, social media followers, enthusiasts and those with only casual interest. The outcomes and risks associated with these communications have broad consequences for society as well as historians and other history practitioners. Why communicate history in this various media? What are the consequences? What are the goals and motivations? What are (hoped to be) the outcomes? What does it mean to communicate history to different audiences through these channels? Who/what exactly is “the public?” How does one identify various “publics?”

This course examines the challenges associated with communicating about the past in today’s media-saturated environment. Case studies include analysis of communication surrounding controversial historical issues such as slavery and race, to the examination of successful history communicators operating in various media. An important sub-theme focuses on best practices and ethics when it comes to communicating history to non-experts through emerging media. Students also learn how to “economize” the history communicator skillset for the workplace.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

During this course, students will...

• Develop skills to communicate history
• Understand what it means to think historically
• Understand the ethics of communicating history
• Develop the agility, literacy and familiarity with the environments history is communicated across
• Learn pros and cons of various media where history is presented
• Learn how to develop the intellectual self-confidence to have a public presence as a historian

At the end of the course, students will be able to...

• Understand the barriers to communicating history through traditional and emerging media
• Articulate the pro’s and con’s of communicating history through various media to different audiences
• Articulate the complexities of history communication in today’s world
• Cite examples of ethical history communication and compare and contrast with unethical history communication
• Gain literacy with several modes of history communication, including writing, film, audio and the Web
• Share history with various non-expert audiences, including journalists, public officials, organizations and casual consumers
• Popularize an example of recent historical scholarship

WORKING CALENDAR

PART I: History 

WEEK 1

• What is history communication? Barriers, ethics, and opportunities
• History as it’s being communicated today (includes public history & digital humanities)
• What are the intended results of history communication?

WEEK 2

• Historical thinking, ethics, and efficacy
• What historians and non-historians have said that “history” is  
• Launch discussions about the ethics of history communication and media participation
• ACTIVITY: Interview chosen historian/scholar to hear her/his approach to “doing history”

WEEK 3

• History of historians’ participation and advocacy in public/media/journalism etc.

• Review media presence of chosen scholar/historian that class will focus on
• Categories of authority: public historians, academic historians and the history communicator

• Map the diversifying landscape of historical preservation/interpretation
• ACTIVITY: Writing an Op-Ed (First Draft)

WEEK 4

• History and theory of media forms
• ACTIVITY: Writing a Historical Grant Outline for non-Historian Funders

PART II: MEDIA

WEEK 5

• The risks of speaking to (multiple) publics
• Controversies in history: how sensitive historical issues get communicated
• ACTIVITY: Create a Department/Faculty Portfolio for non-Historian Audience

WEEK 6

• Audience psychology
• Critical media literacy & analysis
• ACTIVITY: Analyze an article or other current media artifact that discusses history using the Critical Media Literacy Process

WEEK 7

• Experts, pundits, and journalists: academic, public, and avocational historians

• Explore issues of expertise, professionalism, authority

• ACTIVITY: Writing an Op-Ed (Second Draft)

WEEK 8

• Contextualizing the question: primary sources, secondary sources, applying historical thinking
• Synthesizing, distilling & “brevitizing”
• Answering “Why does it matter?”
• ACTIVITY: Write a Script Synthesizes, Distills, and “Brevitizes”

PART III: COMMUNICATION

WEEK 9

• Introduction to writing; persuasive writing, journalistic writing, script writing
• Case study of history in written forms (students choice)
• Interview with a practitioner
• ACTIVITY: Writing an Op-Ed (Third Draft)

WEEK 10

• Introduction to visual & audio media
• Case study of history in visual & audio forms (students choice)
• Interview with a practitioner
• ACTIVITY: Produce a Podcast based on Scripts from Week 8

WEEK 11

• Introduction to filmmaking
• Case study of history in filmmaking (students choice)
• Interview with a practitioner
• ACTIVITY: Produce a 3-5 minute Video Package based on Scripts from Week 8

WEEK 12

• Introduction to Digital Humanities & Websites
• Case study of history on the web (students choice)
• Interview with a practitioner
• ACTIVITY: Produce at least 5 micro artifacts that can be shared via social media; these include tweets (brief text), memes (images with words), and gifs (moving images).

PART IV: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

WEEK 13

• Work session: display the class project

Students exhibit their class project where they are the “communicator”; promote the faculty from history and other departments; translate/amplify another faculty member’s department (political science history, anthropology history)

WEEK 14

• The Business Skills of History

• Business skills, “economize your skill set”

READING SUGGESTIONS (TO DATE)

• Dangerous Games - Margaret MacMillan
• History Manifesto and subsequent debates in the American Historical Review
• “The case for reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, June, 2014.
• History Wars - Linenthal, ed.
• History: A Very Short Introduction - John Arnold
• The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life - Rosenzweig
• Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web - Rosenzweig
• Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts - Sam Wineburg
• Media Literacy in the Information Age - Kubey, ed.
• The Death of Expertise - Tom Nichols
• The Wikipedia Revolution - Andrew Lih
• The Power of News - Michael Schudson
• How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times - Roy Peter Clark
• Writing for Museums - Margot Wallace
• “Everything Has a History” - Jim Grossman, Perspectives, American Historical Association
• Perks and Thomson, The Oral History Reader, on interviewing and interpretation of narrative material