The Philadelphia Public History Truck is a nearly two-year-old mobile museum project which creates interdisciplinary exhibitions about the history of Philadelphia neighborhoods with those who live, work, and play within the places and spaces of the city. Since I founded the project in 2013, I have navigated partnerships with both grassroots organizations and larger institutions and faced a wide-ranging gamut of experiences worthy of examination by public historians concerned with power and production of history as well as practice-based reflexivity. The first half of this thesis documents my key reflections of the first eighteen months of work and serves as a primary source on the project. This paper also places History Truck into a long historiography of both public history and mobility in the United States of America to explain the emergence of what I am calling the New Mobile History, an emerging form of practice in which community members and public historians work together from the onset of project development using ephemerality and movement as a tool for creativity and civic-driven history making. By analyzing oral history interviews with Cynthia Little and Michael Frisch, I argue firstly that Philadelphia was the birthplace of this New Mobile History. Secondly, I posit that for this New Mobile History to continue evolving, public historians must balance digital work and relationship-based process to create exhibitions which directly serve communities of memory. Lastly, I consider one possible future for History Truck, including its transformation from project to nonprofit organization manned by post-M.A. fellows who have the ability to work passionately on city streets and with new media. / History
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/2597 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Bernard, Erin Cecilia |
| Contributors | Bruggeman, Seth C., 1975-, Lowe, Hilary Iris, Lockenour, Jay, 1966- |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 90 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/2579, Theses and Dissertations |
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