Author: Heidi Gengenbach

Bio of a History Grad Student in Public History

By: Lauren A. Prescott

I grew up an hour south of Boston in New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford was a major whaling and trading port in the 19th century and the home of abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass more many years. The history of my city greatly interested me and I was lucky enough to spend many afternoons at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in their summer program. As a child I found my history classes boring, but field trips to museums and historic sites were some of my fondest memories of school. Unfortunately, my history classes were lacking, and we were nothing more than date-memorizing machines for exams.

I entered UMass Amherst in the fall of 2008 as a math major. I had no interest in math, but I had always excelled in those classes. Although I loved history and would often be found immersed in a history book, I did not see a future career in the discipline (other than teaching). I disliked most of my classes, but remained as a math major for two years. At the time, I was working at the Science & Engineering Library on campus and had befriended many people in other disciplines. One person I became particularly close with was a history major and it was through him that I saw the career possibilities in history. Why stick with something that I had no passion for? Why spend all four years of my undergraduate career feeling unfulfilled? It was then that I made the decision to become a history major and took extra courses each semester to finish on time. Those two years were some of my hardest, as I still worked full time, but they were also the most interesting.

In my last year at UMass Amherst, I came across an introductory course to public history. At the time I had no idea what public history was, and simply took it for course credit. That introductory course and Professor Marla Miller opened my eyes to the career possibilities of a public historian. I immediately began looking at graduate schools that offered public history programs and came upon UMass Boston. So what is public history? Public history refers to the work that is done outside the academy, especially in regards to recreating and presenting history to the public. Public historians can be found as archivists, museum curators, historical preservationists and writers. My specific interests lay in childhood education. Public schools across the country have had problems with their history curriculum, and many students (like I did) do not find their history classes interesting or beneficial outside of school. Thankfully, the classroom isn’t the only place for kids to learn! Museums in Boston offer after school and summer programs for students of all ages. This type of interactive learning can make history meaningful and that is what I hope to do after graduation – to present history in a way that makes it meaningful for people, particularly children.

I am now in my second year as a graduate student and hope to finish my degree in the spring of 2016. I recently finished an internship with Mount Auburn Cemetery in December which I greatly enjoyed. For the internship I researched 19th century women activists interred at the cemetery for an upcoming web exhibit on Mount Auburn’s website. I wrote all of the text and acquired all of the visuals (photographs, documents, newspaper articles) for the exhibit. I spent a lot of my time doing research at various archives in the Boston area, especially at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library. The time I spent in the archives this past year gave me a great appreciation for archivists and I wanted to learn more about the profession, which led me to Professor Marilyn Morgan’s digital archives class this semester.

I am also beginning an internship this semester with the Arlington Historical Society in the collections management department. The internship will give me hands on experience working with their collection of over 4,000 objects. My previous internships focused solely on research and my internship at AHS will allow me to learn more about collections care and management, while also learning to use collection management software.

This semester the class will look at the desegregation of Boston schools in the 1970s–1980s and create a digital archive highlighting items found in archives across the city. I am specifically interested in the students’ perspectives. Desegregation of Boston schools was covered in the media for years, and it frequently focused on the opposition to forced busing, parents who refused to send their children to school, and the violence that erupted across the city. But what about the students? How did they feel about school desegregation? How was their day at school impacted? Did the violence stop once the students stepped inside the schools? Were they able to create new friendships, or was there really all of this hostility? There was much more to students’ daily lives than what was portrayed in the media and I hope to bring their stories to light.