The Big Questions

There are dozens of versions of my MRE, all changing slightly or drastically depending on the focus. The focus is determined by posing one or two major research questions, and examining the data in light of those. My project as it turns out is then influenced by two things: what the central question is, and how I came to ask that question.

Initially my project was much vaguer, and covered more ground. As a result, it would likely have been less focused, and said less of value about the field of public history as a whole. It would have been too unwieldy to grapple with. To ascertain what question I would center my research and analysis around, I went looking into the earliest articles published in the field, and read widely any and all writings on the subject of the field's development and a philosophy. I went back to the very beginning, which all told is usually a very good place to start.

Many of the earlier volumes of the Public Historian had articles musing about the creation of the new graduate programs and the MO of the field in general. They referred to the need for graduate programs to train students in new ways of doing history from a professional perspective, and they referred to the growing desire to shine a light on the blind spots of more traditional history, namely social history and social activism, with a focus on women's history, LGBT history, POC history, and history from below more generally.

Though some academics expressed skepticism in the first few years of the field's proliferation that it would actually confront those issues, many early works and reflective works alike both point to this same impetus. It is worth taking seriously, then.

As much as a broad literature review can have a focus, mine will focus on taking this claim - that the field of public history is meant to present a history from below and a worker's history as opposed to the more traditional "great man" view of history - seriously. Have the published articles in this field really addressed this new proposed focus? Did they address it initially and move away, or has the field only recently turned to this focus? If it has, in what ways and with what perspective was this examination undertaken, and to what end?

Not all of these questions will be easily answerable or evident in the raw data such as I will be treating it. Some of these answers may be a simple negative - no this was not true, or not true then, and the why will be left dangling in the analysis.