Ask not what science can do for you, but what public history can do for science! Interpreting Science in Museums and Historic Sites stresses the untapped potential of historical artifacts to inform our understanding of scientific topics. It argues that science gains ground when contextualized in museums and historic sites. Engaging audiences in conversations about hot topics such as health and medical sciences or climate change and responses to it, mediated by a history museum, can emphasize scientific rigor and the time lag between discovery and confirmation of societal benefit. Interpreting Science emphasizes the urgency of this work, provides a toolkit to start and sustain the work, shares case studies that model best practice, and resources useful to facilitate and sustain a science-infused public history.

Ask not what science can do for you, but what public history can do for science! Interpreting Science in Museums and Historic Sites stresses the untapped potential of historical artifacts to inform our understanding of scientific topics. It argues that science gains ground when contextualized in museums and historic sites. Engaging audiences in conversations about hot topics such as health and medical sciences or climate change and responses to it, mediated by a history museum, can emphasize scientific rigor and the time lag between discovery and confirmation of societal benefit. Interpreting Science emphasizes the urgency of this work, provides a toolkit to start and sustain the work, shares case studies that model best practice, and resources useful to facilitate and sustain a science-infused public history.

Interpreting Agriculture in Museums and Historic Sites orients readers to major themes in agriculture and techniques in education and interpretation that can help you develop humanities-based public programming that enhance agricultural literacy. Case studies illustrate the ways that local research can help you link your history organization to compelling local, national (even international) stories focused on the multidisciplinary topic. That ordinary plow, pitch fork, and butter paddle can provide the tangible evidence of the story worth telling, even if the farm land has disappeared into subdivisions and agriculture seems as remote as the nineteenth century. Other topics include discussion of alliances between rural tourism and community-supported agriculture, farmland conservation and stewardship, heritage breed and seed preservation efforts, and antique tractor clubs. Any of these can become indispensable partners to history organizations searching for a new interpretive theme to explore and new partners to engage.

Interpreting Agriculture in Museums and Historic Sites orients readers to major themes in agriculture and techniques in education and interpretation that can help you develop humanities-based public programming that enhance agricultural literacy. Case studies illustrate the ways that local research can help you link your history organization to compelling local, national (even international) stories focused on the multidisciplinary topic. That ordinary plow, pitch fork, and butter paddle can provide the tangible evidence of the story worth telling, even if the farm land has disappeared into subdivisions and agriculture seems as remote as the nineteenth century. Other topics include discussion of alliances between rural tourism and community-supported agriculture, farmland conservation and stewardship, heritage breed and seed preservation efforts, and antique tractor clubs. Any of these can become indispensable partners to history organizations searching for a new interpretive theme to explore and new partners to engage.

State and local history collections provide a foundation for telling stories of the ways that humans have interacted with their environments over time, changing them, destroying them, conserving them, sustaining them. This book re-focuses thinking about the environment to thinking from the perspective of place and time, and people within that place-time continuum. The book provides a primer on “major problems� in researching and thinking about the environment. It addresses human perspectives on land distribution (Indian compared to English, Spanish, French approaches), the range of land use from conservation to exploitation, the disconnect between garbage and reduce-reuse-recycle campaigns; the histories of environmental movements and back to the land movements and their consequences, and the different experiences that become evidence when research documents race, class, gender and ethnicity in one place over time. The book moves beyond “nature,� distinguishing between natural environments and human-manipulated environments and ecosystems. Both have relevance to "interpreting the environment at museums and historic sites." It proposes a multi-disciplinary approach that requires expertise in the Humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences to best understand space and place over time. It incorporates case studies of the theory and method in relation to human goals – creating working environments, getting water, growing food, traveling and trading, building things, and preserving remarkable natural landscapes. Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites is for anyone who wants to better understand the environment that surrounds us and sustains us, who wants to become a better steward of that environment, and who wants to share lessons learned with others. The process starts by focusing attention on the environment – the physical space that constitutes the largest three-dimensional object in museum collections. It involves conceptualizing spaces and places of human influence; spaces that contain layer upon layer documenting human struggles to survive and thrive. This evidence exists in natural environments as well as the city center. The process continues by adopting an environment-centric view of the spaces destined to be interpreted. This mind-set forms the basis for devising research plans to document the ways humans have changed, destroyed, conserved and sustained spaces over time, and the ways that the environment reacts. Interpretation built on evidence, then becomes the basis for cross-disciplinary engagement with the environment.

State and local history collections provide a foundation for telling stories of the ways that humans have interacted with their environments over time, changing them, destroying them, conserving them, sustaining them. This book re-focuses thinking about the environment to thinking from the perspective of place and time, and people within that place-time continuum. The book provides a primer on “major problems� in researching and thinking about the environment. It addresses human perspectives on land distribution (Indian compared to English, Spanish, French approaches), the range of land use from conservation to exploitation, the disconnect between garbage and reduce-reuse-recycle campaigns; the histories of environmental movements and back to the land movements and their consequences, and the different experiences that become evidence when research documents race, class, gender and ethnicity in one place over time. The book moves beyond “nature,� distinguishing between natural environments and human-manipulated environments and ecosystems. Both have relevance to "interpreting the environment at museums and historic sites." It proposes a multi-disciplinary approach that requires expertise in the Humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences to best understand space and place over time. It incorporates case studies of the theory and method in relation to human goals – creating working environments, getting water, growing food, traveling and trading, building things, and preserving remarkable natural landscapes. Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites is for anyone who wants to better understand the environment that surrounds us and sustains us, who wants to become a better steward of that environment, and who wants to share lessons learned with others. The process starts by focusing attention on the environment – the physical space that constitutes the largest three-dimensional object in museum collections. It involves conceptualizing spaces and places of human influence; spaces that contain layer upon layer documenting human struggles to survive and thrive. This evidence exists in natural environments as well as the city center. The process continues by adopting an environment-centric view of the spaces destined to be interpreted. This mind-set forms the basis for devising research plans to document the ways humans have changed, destroyed, conserved and sustained spaces over time, and the ways that the environment reacts. Interpretation built on evidence, then becomes the basis for cross-disciplinary engagement with the environment.

"This ground-breaking collection proves that there is still a great deal to learn about the lives of black southerners. The essays offer a counterpoint to the standard story that all African Americans in the rural South found themselves mired in poverty and dependency."--Melissa Walker, author of "Southern Farmers and Their Stories" "A remarkable achievement. The authors in this collection have retrieved African American farm owners from the margins of history, making clear that life on the land for African Americans not only transcended sharecropping but also shaped the contours of the struggle for freedom and justice."--Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of "Bloody Lowndes" This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land. The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience. Debra A. Reid, professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, is author of "Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas." Evan P. Bennett is assistant professor of history at Florida Atlantic University.