Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences

Cherstin M. Lyon is an associate professor of history and the past coordinator for the public and oral history program at California State University in San Bernardino where she directed that program for six years. She currently is coordinator of the interdisciplinary M.A. program in Social Sciences and Globalization that offers a track in public history and museum studies. She is author of Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory, published by Temple University Press in 2012. Elizabeth Nix is an Associate Professor of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies and the Director of the Helen P. Denit Honors Program at the University of Baltimore. An American Studies graduate of the undergraduate program at Yale and the Ph.D. program at Boston University, Nix was part of the steering committee for Baltimore '68, the winner of the National Council on Public History Outstanding Project award in 2009 and an award of Merit and the WOW Award from the American Association of State and Local History in that same year. Rebecca K. Shrum is an Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Director of the Public History Program at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) where she works with both graduate and undergraduate students studying public history. Along with local partners, she also directs the IUPUI Public History Program's Curatescape project, Discover Indiana, available at discoverIN.org. Her research interests include early American history, material culture and identity, and historic site interpretation. She is author of In the Looking Glass: Mirrors and Identity in Early America, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2017.