Working groups, involving facilitators and up to twelve discussants, allow conferees to explore in depth a subject of shared concern before and during the annual meeting. In these seminar-like conversations, participants have a chance to discuss questions raised by specific programs, problems, or initiatives in their own public history practice with peers grappling with similar issues. Working groups articulate a purpose they are working toward or a problem they are actively trying to solve and aim to create an end product(s), such as a report, article, website, or exhibition. For 2018, eight working groups are assembling:
- Insider/Outsider: Racial Bias and Positionality in Interpretation
- Disrupting Institutional Power: Imagining a Regional Model for Public History Education
- La Frontera: Public History on the Borderlands
- Negotiating Power Lines: Economic Justice and the Ethics of Public History
- Agriculture and Public History
- Crossing the Line: Facilitating Digital Access to Primary Sources
- Millennials as Change-Makers: The Power Lines between Generations in Public History Institutions
- The Public History of Labor
For more information or to join a working group, see the NHCP 2018 Working Group Call for Discussants Flier
Rosemary Feurer is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950, among others. She is working on The Illinois Mine Wars, 1860-1940 and a new biography of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones.