Comments on: Deep time and public history

By: Bruce Baskerville

Bruce Baskerville — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:22:04 +0000

Great post Stephen. It reminds me of a seminar I was involved in at Sydney Uni when Bill Gamage’s The Biggest Estate was published. I argued that historians working in various heritage fields such as the old NPWS had been grappling with such issues since the 1990s (how to develop a human history of a landscape that was still popularly considered to be ‘pristine wilderness’, or recently degraded by settlers and which could be ‘restored’ to ‘pristine wilderness’). Natural heritage advocates could, at that time, be quite blind to Aboriginal shaping and making of environments – it was around that time that I came to a view that the concept of wilderness was another version of terra nullius. I’m not sure how much the academy is open to persuasion about public history – but perhaps they are not the audience we should really worry about, rather, taking more time to explain the role of public historians in developing concepts and approaches to deep time to non-academic audiences may be more important (including publishers). I found Rob Paton’s essay in “Long History Deep Time” (ANU Press, 2015) particularly useful, and my thinking is currently enamoured (if that is the right word) with the three-part history timeframe outlined in the Uluru Statement – neither of these are from the academy, but they are stimulating reading.
Thanks again for an excellent post,
BB

By: Yvonne Perkins

Yvonne Perkins — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 02:17:18 +0000

This is a thoughtful and well argued piece. The practice of public history is not well known amongst the academic historians who dominate the Australian Historical Association. As Stephen argues, we need to do more to raise awareness of the practice of public history at the Australian Historical Association conferences, but we also need to do a lot more to raise awareness of the work of historians in the area of public history with potential clients, media and the general public in Australia. Perhaps the PHA can come up with a strategy to do this? There is a PHA conference coming up in NSW. Could this be a focus of consultation at the PHA conference?

By: Kate Bagnall

Kate Bagnall — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 04:27:50 +0000

Lots of resonances here for me too!

By: Ian Willis

Ian Willis — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 08:07:54 +0000

Well said.