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 44: History for Gamers
Episode 43: Reconciling the Church and Slavery
Episode 42: An American Saint
Episode 41: Populism
Episode 40: Sportianity
Episode 39: Returning to Charlottesville
Bonus Episode: *Believe Me* Book Launch
Bonus Episode: Live at Messiah College Educator's Day
Episode 38: Jesus Is the Rock That Rolls My Blues Away
Episode 37: Should You Go to Grad School?
Episode 36: The 18th-Century Atlantic World
Episode 35: Global Hockey
Episode 34: Twitterstorians
Episode 33: The Power of Sport
Episode 32: The Politics of Sex
Episode 31: Searching for Christian America in a Boston High School
Episode 30: The Evangelicals
Episode 29: Libertarianism and Democracy
Episode 28: That Memphis Sound
Episode 27: From Mount Vernon to Mar-a-Lago
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