WORKING GROUPS SOUGHT FOR NCPH

2010 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, Portland

NCPH working groups, led by senior practitioners and involving up to twelve discussants, will allow conferees to explore in depth a subject of shared concern. In these innovative seminar-like conversations, participants will have a chance to discuss questions raised by specific programs, problems, or initiatives in their own public history practice with peers grappling with similar issues. For 2010, fifteen working groups are being assembled:

1. Consultants’ Working Group
2. Employment/Experience Opportunities for Recent Graduates and New Professionals
3. Environmental Sites of Conscience: Exploring Issues to Inspire Visitor Action at Environmental History Sites
4. How Do We Get There? Racial and Ethnic Diversity within the Public History Profession—Continuing the Discussion
5. International Council on Public History? Bringing Global Public History Closer?
6. Interns to the Rescue!  Public History-University Partnerships in Financial Crisis
7. Jump Start Your Digital Project in Public History: Planning Sessions
8. Preparing the Professional Historian: Connecting Academic Training with the Changing Marketplace
9. Public History for Undergraduates: Teaching, Mentoring, and Program Development
10. The Public History of (Allegedly) Illegal Behavior
11. Recycling Buildings? Reframing Historic Preservation in the Language of Sustainability and the Green Economy
12. Toward a New Textbook for Undergraduates in Public History
13. Working 9 to 5 While Practicing History
14. Continuing Conversations/Bearing the Standard: Public Historians Role in the Commemorations of the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War
15. Structuring the [International?] Discourse of Public History Practice and Scholarship

To join a working group, please submit one paragraph describing the issues you wish to raise with your peers, together with a one-page resume or c.v. by October 15. We welcome submissions from individuals from a range of professions and career stages. Please see the specific working group descriptions below. Individuals who are selected will be listed as working group discussants in the conference Program. 

This winter the group facilitators will ask participants to contribute a case statement of no more than two to four double spaced pages for discussion. The case statement will describe their particular experience, such as a case study, define the issues it raises, and suggests strategies and/or goals for resolution. Case statements will be circulated among participants by email and posted in PDF format on the NCPH website. Discussants are expected to read and comment by email briefly on one another's case statements before the conference date. Some working groups may also have shared background reading materials identified by their facilitators.

Other conference participants may sit in on the sessions, and will have access to the case statements and any supplementary readings through the NCPH website, but are asked to allow the original discussants priority in the working group discussion at the conference.

To apply, please send your paragraph and one-page resume/c.v. by October 15 to ncph@iupui.edu with the specific working group title in the subject line of your email. (You may apply to participate in a working group whether or not you have submitted another presentation or session proposal. You may apply for up to two working groups but must indicate a first choice and second choice.) All presenters, attendees, and other participants are expected to register for the annual meeting. 

Each working group is described in detail at www.ncph.org.