Public History and the Iraq War
The Public Historian invites submissions for a special issue on the
intersections of public history and the Iraq War.The war continues and associated civil and international conflicts are far from being resolved.
In this context, print, televisual, electronic mediation of the war by
scholars, journalists, videographers and policy analysts have generated a
massive (and growing) body of documentation and analysis, representing a
spectrum of perspectives and positions. This situation, even though still
unfolding, poses a variety of questions - political, conceptual and methodological -- for public historians.
- How does the documentation of current military operations by historians and by others, such as journalists, differ from that undertaken during previous wars?
- Given recent advances in digital information technology, what particular challenges are now posed by the collection, archiving and dissemination of information for historians attached to government agencies, offices, or military service branches? With what goals are historians attached to military branches and government offices charged?
- And how do these goals influence the production and analysis of documents and historical narratives? How have the varying perspectives and methods of journalists, military branch historians and academic historians influenced the interpretation of current military operations? How are museums maintained by and/or associated with military branches dealing with the questions of collection, curation, and exhibition of materials associated with the Iraq War?
Please submit a one-page abstract and a brief CV with contact information
by March 1, 2005 to Lindsey Reed, Managing Editor, The Public Historian,
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106,
lreed@ltsc.ucsb.edu.
