Bringing History to Life: New Public History Track Connects Students with Communities

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences 

The new Public History track will soon allow students to bring history to life in partnership with local organizations, leaving behind the notion that history itself is relegated to the past, closed within books. 

“Public history is the practice of putting history to work in the real world,” said Assistant Professor of History and Humanities Felicia Jamison. “When students take a survey class, many think of history as recording names and dates, but it is so much more. It is about context and it is about creating different projects with community partners.” 

The BA in History with the newly added Public History track, which is launching this spring 2027, is a focus that will allow students to do just that, opening doors to careers in museums, preservation organizations, in media, alongside anthropologists, and more. 

“Students will learn skills that prepare them to work in archives, how to do archival research, how to create exhibits, and how to conduct oral histories through interviews, so that we can preserve the memories of people who are now living,” Jamison said. 

On Thursday, Oct. 1 at 5:30 PM, the History Department is inviting students, alumni, and community partners to celebrate the launch of this new track at Gottschalk Hall with a reception and screening of a new film presented by The Speed Art Museum. Filson Historical Society is co-sponsoring the event. 

This film documents Sam Gilliam visiting artist vanessa german’s performance, “Future Histories of Emancipation,” that happened in October 2025. The performance brought to life the history of Gottschalk Hall, home of the History Department. 

The performance highlighted the stories of young Black girls imprisoned within the building, the former site of the ‘Colored Girls Dormitory,’ throughout history, who also attempted to escape. 

The concept for the piece was born from public history, when german noticed the new historical marker outside of the building while walking on campus, read the story, and was inspired to create a performance piece. 

“The public history program relies on community engagement, and it is very much about training students to work within the community and bring historical knowledge – it's intimately connected to that,” said History Department Chair Chris Ehrick. 

Students in public history courses in the past have worked on several community-engaged projects. For example, students have had the chance to work with the Filson Historical Society. 

“The first project we did with them a few years ago was the Oxmoor Farm Project, in which students actually looked through the records and added metadata to insert the voices of enslaved people, because oftentimes when people conduct research, they view the enslavers first,” Jamison said. “That was a really important project.” 

The African American Public History Class is preparing an exhibit for this fall which will present the research they completed around the founding of the Pan-African Studies Department at UofL. 

“We worked with Chad Kamen in the archives and looked through a lot of primary sources to figure out how to tell stories of undergrad students in the ‘60s who fought to get Black studies at UofL and looking at the conversations that were going on across the country. It also looks at the importance of Pan-African Studies.” 

During another past course, students collaborated with the Eliza Tevis Society. Tevis was an African American woman who was formerly enslaved who helped found the community of Newburg. She donated land there in the 1800s.  

“We worked with the Eliza Tevis Society and her descendants, and students were able to conduct oral histories and collect some of the sources that the families had collected over the years, and we did an exhibit with the Frazier,” Jamison said. “These partnerships happen organically through making community connections, and then classes are built around these subjects. Students work with people in the community and partners to create projects that have an important impact.” 

Ehrick said that public history is a naturally interdisciplinary field, and students will be able to tailor the new track to their own future career goals, whether they want to focus on art or art history, film, and more. 

“As someone who is a media historian, I think of how we communicate things – film, or podcasts; all these ways that you can bring the past to the present,” Ehrick said. “Right now – in the present time - is a good example of looking at how we talk about the past as a contested issue. This reminds us that it matters. How we think about the past, and the stories we tell about the past, and what we choose to elevate or not in terms of stories from the past - matters in terms of how we think about ourselves in the present. It is also a particularly important moment to insist on telling the stories of this building. It’s important – especially right now.” 

Jamison added that many students continue their work in public history with local organizations. 

“A lot of the projects we do are intellectually and emotionally fulfilling for students, so they do it even after the class is finished or even after graduation,” she said. 

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