What Public History Offers, and Why It Matters

In Public History and the Study of Memory,' David Glassberg offers an overview of the scholarship of memory as it pertains to the practice of history, with reflections on how history could itself contribute usefully to this scholarship. This exceptionally useful essay should help crystallize a very important moment in both scholarship and practice, with a sharpened interest in the rich potential of history the likely result. My general sense is that Glassberg is most effective in showing how the broad recent interest in memory can both propel and shape a widening scope for history research and practice, but he is more understated in suggesting the unique contribution history can make to an emerging memory scholarship. In this respect, the essay positions itself within the professional discourse of history, from its initial framing of the dialogue between academic and historians to its very useful reflections on promising directions for audience research out in the field. Its strengths are in considering those questions bearing most directly on what Glassberg calls public where history, tradition, memory, and the come together in more or