This issue brings several articles that explore the concept of authority in public history, an idea that has long shaped debates about how we define our field. The first, Michael J. Brown’s “Overlapping Origins, Diverging Paths: ‘Public History’ and the ‘Public Intellectual,’” examines how these two approaches to engaged scholarship (or more accurately, the labels identifying them) each emerged in response to larger social and academic trends in 1970s, but defined quite distinct approaches. Key to their differences were questions of authority. As Brown writes, “Whereas authorship and, thus, the authoritative voice have remained central for public intellectuals, public historians have rethought the nature of authority itself.…In public history, the processes of meaning-making and shared authority have moved to the center of the field.” The article provides an invaluable genealogy of our field, centering the meaning of authority squarely in its discussion.

In her article, “Race, History, and the Politics...

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