Engaging Place, Engaging Practices contains a series of six essays on a variety of collaborative public history projects pursued by urban universities across the United States to open a discussion about ways urban universities and public historians can better serve their communities. All of the highlighted projects involve community-engaged work that serve to build networks and address pertinent issues in underserved areas surrounding these campuses. The authors contend that these collaborative efforts can preserve community culture and respond to local needs by examining issues through the lens of the past. The essays originated from a 2014 Urban History Association Conference roundtable discussion, “Civic Engagement and Community Development: Public Humanities, Place-Making, and the Uses of Urban History.”
Each of the projects has a different purpose and provides readers interested in initiating such a public history project with a wide range of models from which to draw ideas. At Virginia’s University of...
University of California Press