The Public Understanding of the Past

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

A Trademark Approach to the Past: Ken Burns, the Historical Profession, and Assessing Popular Presentations of the Past

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Ellen Rose ◽  
Julie Corley
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ◽  
Documentary Filmmaking ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Historical Profession

A review of Not for Ourselves Alone, a historical documentary film by Ken Burns about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's leadership of the nineteenthcentury women's rights movement, indicates serious concerns about the impact of historical documentary filmmaking on public understanding of the past. New ways to engage the public in the process of historical analysis and understanding are suggested.

Foreign travels

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-293
Author(s):  
A. Cook
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The Human Condition ◽  
New Millennium

Entering a new millennium the state of the public understanding of science is, and will continue to be, a key to the human condition; stories of the past may help to deepen it. In that hope we intend to mark the end of the present millennium in September 2000 or the start of the new one in January 2001 by an issue with millennial contributions, the choice of date depending on how rapidly potential authors respond to these hints.

Public Interest Environmental Groups in the United States and Britain

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy O'Riordan
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Function ◽  
The Subject

In a democratic political system policymaking takes place as a consequence of the clash of competing interests promoted in part by pressure groups. In the past many pressure groups operated in the shadows between the spotlight of intense publicity and the dark spaces where decision-takers and their advisers are to be found. More recently, especially in the case of the “ cause ” groups that form the subject of this analysis, pressure groups are working more consciously in the public arena both to arouse support and to widen the general understanding of the causes they espouse. Broadly speaking the political function of a pressure group is to recognize and publicize deficiencies in governmental activity; to try to influence in their favour governmental decisions; to provide information about events or problems that otherwise might not be available for decision-takers to consider; and, in some instances, to focus public attention on and increase public understanding of particular issues of wide social and moral significance.

Accurate depiction of uncertainty in ancient DNA research: The case of Neandertal ancestry in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 146960532199561
Author(s):  
John Hawks
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Biological Anthropology ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Complex Models

All approaches to understanding the past must work with limited data. Like many other kinds of evidence of past peoples, the relation between ancient DNA and past events is intermediated by complex models that bear many assumptions, some untested or untestable. Statements about the past from this evidence are thus accompanied by uncertainty, some quantified and some unquantifiable. Accurate communication of this uncertainty is essential to effective cross-disciplinary collaboration and public understanding. Here I examine one well-studied case of ancient DNA inference: the inference of Neandertal ancestry for today’s African peoples. In this case study, scientific predictions about Neandertal introgression and the genetic variation of all living people both gave consistent predictions before the sequencing of Neandertal DNA. Still, at the time that a draft Neandertal genome was published, a myth became established among the public that today’s Africans are different from all other living humans in that they lack Neandertal ancestors. This contribution reviews public statements, press releases, and press accounts to understand the origin of this story and why it became widespread. I review the ultimate impact of this story and the path toward correcting it. In light of this example, I provide some guidelines on how to recognize accurate depiction of uncertainty and examples of how effective engagement with content experts in archaeology and biological anthropology can lead to stronger and more easily communicated scientific outcomes.

"Welcome to Country" and "Acknowledgment of Country"

Contention ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pelizzon ◽  
Jade Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Public Understanding ◽  
Public Event ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Torres Strait

In the past two decades, “Welcome to Country” and “Acknowledgment of Country” practices have become commonplace at the commencement of most public events throughout Australia, and it is highly unusual to participate in a public event where some words of acknowledgment of the traditional owners and custodians of the locale are omitted. This article traces the origins of such practices while identifying the semantic, political, and conceptual differences between them. It articulates how precolonial protocols of encounter among distinct groups and individuals inform “Welcome to Country” practices, attesting to the ontological and epistemological continuity of the latter in relation to the former. It explores recent trends in the public understanding and positioning of both “Welcome to Country” and “Acknowledgment of Country” speeches and events, contextualizing their emerging positioning within the fabric of Australian settler colonial relations, particularly in the context of contemporary discourses on Aboriginal sovereignty and the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Migration as a metaphor for time

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Brian Lambkin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Intractable Problem

Two previous articles proposed the reframing of metaphors for metaphor and time in terms of migration as a device or tool for promoting public understanding. They addressed the difficulty in the social world of explaining the world of metaphor and the world of time (Lambkin, 2012, 2014). The latter was concerned with a particular difficulty of time: explaining how we access the world of the past and the world of the future from the world of the present. The concern here is with a further difficulty of time: explaining how, once ‘accessed’, we ‘deal with’ the past and ‘deal with’ the future. It is argued that a better understanding of the simultaneity of these two inextricably linked actions is important in the social world, especially in the discourse of conflict resolution when the tension between ‘dealing with’ the past and ‘dealing with’ the future is an intractable problem, as currently in the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’. The metaphorical representation of that tension is examined in a recent document of the Northern Ireland peace process (Haas & O’Sullivan, 2013) and in three other illustrative texts (Hughes & Hamlin, 1977; Giddens, 1999; Cameron, 2011). A proposal is made for reframing the phenomenon of ‘simultaneous pluralism’ or ‘plural singularity’ in terms of migration, as a way of promoting the public understanding of time in particular, and as an aid to resolving or ‘dealing with’ the tension between ‘dealing with’ the past and ‘dealing with’ the future when in the social world it becomes problematic.

scholarly journals Science and journalism: friend or foe?

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S260) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cătălin Mosoia
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Understanding Of Science

AbstractA journalist's view on science and journalism. The presentation is based on personal experience gained over the past few years as editor of the minute of science broadcasted at Radio Europa FM, Bucharest, Romania, and as editor and writer for the Romanian electronic science newspaper Ziarul stiintelor. Is it possible to have science with or without journalism? Who is waiting for whom, science or journalism? Is astronomy more attractive to the public than other disciplines? Can it be used as a growing factor for the public understanding of science?

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

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