Below are the preliminary statements from participants in this roundtable, which will be held on Friday at 1:30 in the Museum of Commerce Classroom, Village. Blog readers are invited to share their responses to these statements by posting comments after the entry on the main blog page.
Seth C. Bruggeman, Temple University:
I come to this conversation as someone who benefited significantly from writing an administrative history. During 2003-06, while still a graduate student, I researched and wrote an administrative history of the George Washington Birthplace National Monument. The dissertation that it inspired and the book that followed really launched my career. It was not, however, the career I anticipated. Before writing the administrative history, my research and teaching interests mostly concerned cultural studies. During the project, however, I discovered that studying the park's history allowed me to square the theoretical claims of cultural historians with the lived reality of a federal monument and its makers. The experience taught me many things. It showed me, for instance, how important the National Park Service is in shaping historical knowledge. It introduced me to an incredible and largely unexplored cache of documents. And, most importantly, it taught me that producing engaged scholarship for a broad audience demands sensitivities that graduate school rarely equips us with. Now that I run a graduate program in public history, I work hard to ensure that our students see the intellectual and professional opportunities that await them beyond the academy. In this light, I offer myself as evidence that building cooperative relationships between federal agencies and universities really does stand to change how history gets done in all facets of the profession.
Return to main post to comment.
Joan M. Zenzen, Independent Historian:
I have written four administrative histories, all of national battlefield parks. University presses published two of the histories, on Manassas and Fort Stanwix, and the US Government Printing Office published a third, on Minute Man (though I hope to see that revised and also taken up by a university press). The fourth, on Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania and in draft form now, hopefully will also see publication. These peer-reviewed studies have examined not just the ins and outs of park management over time, but they have also tied park development to such larger issues as memory, reconstruction, partnerships, reenacting, and authenticity. I have had former and current superintendents and other managers say to me that these books served them well when first coming to a park or addressing a lingering issue. I have also seen my books sit neglected even as a park reaches an important milestone date or new managers enter. How can administrative histories better serve managers and other decision-makers? Should historians write targeted short studies that focus on a single key issue for a park? Should these histories become hyperlinked electronic documents that sit on a superintendent’s computer for ready access? Should historians engage in a concerted education effort to advertise the benefits of these histories to managers and others? I look forward to working with the roundtable participants and audience members in developing effective strategies for these crucial histories.
Return to main post to comment.
Administrative histories are valuable tools that aid public land management. Much like the military, employees of the National Park Service move around the country to move up their career ladders. The administrative history of each park unit therefore is an effective tool to provide the context and record of past decision making in each park. However, the document’s length and style can be intimidating to non-historians. With this in mind, I made accessibility the first priority when I conceptualized the Yosemite administrative history. Adopting an attitude of—the less people read this document the better—I employed both visual and writing strategies to break the report’s narrative into topical threads that allowed employees to easily focus on their program areas.
My experience with the U.S. Forest Service has been much different. By law, the USFS has a much different mission than the Park Service. USFS focus is on land management, while cultural resource management is relegated primarily to compliance duties with the National Historic Preservation Act, the American Antiquities Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Nonetheless, administrative histories are just as valuable a tool for the Forest Service. The difference, and the challenge, is convincing USFS land managers of the utility and benefit of an historical study and to commit the funds to produce it.
Return to main post to comment.
Susan Ferentinos, Public History Manager, Organization of American Historians:
The Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service have a longstanding relationship where the two agencies collaborate on a variety of historical projects, including administrative histories. As the manager of over a hundred joint OAH-NPS projects, I can attest that administrative histories are a type of endeavor with their own unique set of challenges and opportunities. Surprisingly, I have found this type of project to be among the most controversial of the NPS’ historical products, and also the endeavor with the widest range of expectations on what constitutes a “good” final product. In the case of parks and programs with little cultural resources content, these reports also bring historians in contact with reviewers who may have little understanding of our discipline.
At the same time, park interpretation seems to be increasingly dealing with the concept of change over time. For instance, a park exhibit may say “For years, we managed wildlife overpopulation in this way, but in light of new data from the scientific community, we changed our approach in the mid-1990s”. At a historical park, the trend might be reflected in a ranger talk that acknowledges that a park was originally founded as a shrine to the westward migration (and cultural dominance) of European-Americans, but that historians now understand this story in a dramatically different way. Administrative histories are key to understanding changes in park management and interpretation and as such, they offer an opportunity to contribute to this new trend in interpretation that presents knowledge as ever-evolving rather than monolithic and unchanging.
Return to main post to comment.
Robert K. Sutton, Chief Historian, National Park Service:
Several years ago, when I arrived as the acting superintendent at Manassas National Battlefield Park, our chief of interpretation handed me a copy of the draft administrative history that had just been submitted by Joan Zenzen. He wanted me to review the draft, both as a historian, and thought it would be useful to me as I embarked on my new duties. 12 ½ years later, when I left Manassas, I could easily say that this administrative history was far and away the most useful tool in my tenure there. So, now in my present position as Chief Historian of the National Park Service, I can, from experience, tout the great value of administrative histories for parks. Some, like the one Joan prepared for us, are of such high quality, they are published by university presses, and have wide appeal to a general audience. But, whether published or not, administrative histories are incredibly useful tools for our park managers and decision makers. They provide roadmaps for building on successes, and danger signs for not repeating previous mistakes. As we are embarking on the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, we are gathering reports from each of the events and programs we are involved in, with the goal of developing an administrative history on this four-year period. We plan to use all of this material to write an administrative history of the sesquicentennial, so that park rangers in 2061-64, when we are long gone, will know what we did for this commemoration.
Return to main post to comment.
