Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are currently wrestling with. Our guest today, historian Nick Witham, author of Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America, reminds us that these questions are not new. Some of the country's most prominent writer-historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner, grappled with how to reach the public with good historical scholarship.
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Episode 104: The Roots of American Public Education
Episode 103: Spiritual Socialists
Episode 102: The Ghosts of Colonial Williamsburg
Episode 101: "Exhibiting Evangelicalism"
Episode 100: Christian Historians as Activists?
Episode 99: Historicizing the Search for Roots
Episode 98: Conversions: Spiritual and Political
Episode 97: In Search of George Washington's Hair
Episode 96: Thinking Historically about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Episode 95: The Lost Promise of American Universities
Episode 94: Gettysburg, 1963
Episode 93: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America
Episode 92: Original Sin and the History of American Democracy
Episode 91: Providential History and the Pacific Northwest
Episode 90: "The Gospel According to Charles Lindbergh"
Episode 89: The Heretical John C. Calhoun
Episode 88: History Education on the Great Plains
Episode 87: Religion and the American Revolution
Episode 86: A Conversation with Eric Miller, Editor of Current
Episode 85: Reckoning with Confederate Monuments
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