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Public History and the Food Movement argues that today's broad
interest in making food systems fairer, healthier, and more
sustainable offers a compelling opportunity for the public history
field. Moon and Stanton show how linking heritage institutions'
unique skills and resources with contemporary food issues can offer
accessible points of entry for the public into broad questions
about human and environmental resilience. They argue that this
approach can also benefit institutions themselves, by offering
potential new audiences, partners, and sources of support at a time
when many are struggling to remain relevant and viable. Interviews
with innovative practitioners in both the food and history fields
offer additional insights. Drawing on both scholarship and
practice, Public History and the Food Movement presents a practical
toolkit for engagement. Demonstrating how public historians can
take on a vital contemporary issue while remaining true to the
guiding principles of historical research and interpretation, the
book challenges public historians to claim an expanded role in
today's food politics. The fresh thinking will also be of interest
to public historians looking to engage with other timely issues.
Public History and the Food Movement argues that today's broad
interest in making food systems fairer, healthier, and more
sustainable offers a compelling opportunity for the public history
field. Moon and Stanton show how linking heritage institutions'
unique skills and resources with contemporary food issues can offer
accessible points of entry for the public into broad questions
about human and environmental resilience. They argue that this
approach can also benefit institutions themselves, by offering
potential new audiences, partners, and sources of support at a time
when many are struggling to remain relevant and viable. Interviews
with innovative practitioners in both the food and history fields
offer additional insights. Drawing on both scholarship and
practice, Public History and the Food Movement presents a practical
toolkit for engagement. Demonstrating how public historians can
take on a vital contemporary issue while remaining true to the
guiding principles of historical research and interpretation, the
book challenges public historians to claim an expanded role in
today's food politics. The fresh thinking will also be of interest
to public historians looking to engage with other timely issues.
In the early nineteenth century, Lowell, Massachusetts, was widely
studied and emulated as a model for capitalist industrial
development. One of the first cities in the United States to
experience the ravages of deindustrialization, it was also among
the first places in the world to turn to its own industrial and
ethnic history as a tool for reinventing itself in the emerging
postindustrial economy. ""The Lowell Experiment"" explores how
history and culture have been used to remake Lowell and how
historians have played a crucial, yet ambiguous role in that
process. The book focuses on Lowell National Historical Park, the
flagship project of Lowell's new cultural economy. When it was
created in 1978, the park broke new ground with its sweeping
reinterpretations of labor, immigrant, and women's history. It
served as a test site for the ideas of practitioners in the new
field of public history - a field that links the work of
professionally trained historians with many different kinds of
projects in the public realm. ""The Lowell Experiment"" takes an
anthropological approach to public history in Lowell, showing it as
a complex cultural performance shaped by local memory, the
imperatives of economic redevelopment, and tourist rituals - all
serving to locate the park's audiences and workers more securely
within a changing and uncertain new economy characterized by
growing inequalities and new exclusions. The paradoxical dual role
of Lowell's public historians as both interpreters of and
contributors to that new economy raises important questions about
the challenges and limitations facing academically trained scholars
in contemporary American culture. As a long-standing and well-known
example of ""culture-led redevelopment,"" Lowell offers an
outstanding site for exploring questions of concern to those in the
fields of public and urban history, urban planning, and tourism
studies.
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