Whose History Are We Telling?

The author of the following article “Whose Public “ “Whose History “, depicts a broader perspective on the goal of producing public history and the challenges that are paired along with it. Author Robert J. Grele challenges public historians within his article by providing a vital question that demonstrates the importance of historical context: “ Who owns history, and who gets to tell it ?”. His purpose for illustrating the following information connects to our work as public servants to society and how the history that we produce is told to the world. Whether we’re working in a museum, archives or even engaging with the public through digital platforms.  Our job description isn’t just based on recording facts or distributing data, but rather its focus is to interpret facts to them on a broader scale. Grele’s article also argues that history is often constructed by the powerful due to those with access to resources, institutions, and platforms that reflect their interests. For example, since the day of the 47th President’s inauguration, an increase in media activity has occurred in reference to the undoing of Rolling Back DEI Executive Orders and Accessibility Efforts.It would be our role as public historians to collect live feedback from communities that may be affected from this ordeal. One of Grele’s questions in particularly stuck out to me : “ Whose Public Are We Serving .” The “ public “ in public history is another point of the contention . Public historians are often tasked with communicating history to diverse groups but whose interest are we really serving too ? The answer that Grele suggests is not as simple as it may seem . He argues that as historians we face a dual responsibility of balancing accessibility with academic rigor , in the essence that it may navigate the demands of the public .