For this assignment, I investigated the change in what is considered scholarly communication in the field of history, as public or applied history becomes more popular, as it relates to tenure requirements. History was traditionally practiced only by academics [history is interesting in that many non-academics have an interest in it, do research, and publish (traditionally books, but now blogs, etc] and so the accepted methods of scholarly communications reflect this, with the expectation that historians would publish books and journal articles. Historians were originally less concerned with communicating with the public, however, this is changing as public history gains credibility and popularity. Public historians are not only communicating with other scholars, but they are communicating with the public. Ultimately this means that when they are being evaluated, for example for tenure, they likely will not have such extensive publication lists and accomplishments that conform to traditional views on scholarly communication because for public historians a vital part of their job is communicating with non-scholars. This does not mean that they are communicating less or that the way they are communicating as scholars is less legitimate, only that it is different and needs to be addressed so they do not get penalized for this. For example, Clements suggests that they should be evaluated for scholarship based on “reports, surveys, successful grants, films, exhibits” etc. and that this is how they not only communicate with the public but also with other public history scholars in their field (Clements, 60).
It was surprising how long this has been an ongoing discussion for and I had imagined that the changes would be to make the tenure and promotion criteria for all historians in academia more open to different types of work and assessment, especially earlier on, but as Clements suggests, and Schulz and Clements report, in actuality a separate set of criteria was created for evaluating the scholarship of public historians and their communication and engagement with their colleagues. The shift can be best described as changing the focus from judgements of scholarly “product” to judgements of “process” (Schulz & Clements, 91).
Despite this having been an ongoing issue since at least 1983, and the appearance that some changes occurred early on, a greater, more wide-spread change should have been expected between then and 2017, however the renewed support by the American History Association for a 2010 report demonstrates that very little progress was actually made in the intervening years. By 2017 public historians were still being undervalued and overlooked for promotion because much of their form of communication with the scholarly community was still not fully legitimized because it was focused on also communicating to the public. Despite the fact that many universities hired public historians to communicate with their local communities and did not, or could not, utilize their own academic historians for this purpose, academia still will not recognize their methods as equal to traditional academic scholarly work and forms of communication such as monographs and journal articles. To explain this, the report found a flaw with the peer review process for tenure procedures. Ultimately, public historians were not reviewed by their peers but by others who either misunderstood or undervalued their work to begin with (Ahlberg et al).
The undervaluing and lack of recognition seen in the AHA supported report is further supported by later work as well which highlights small changes occurring slowly throughout academia but a maintained general underrating of the scholarly work and communication done by public historians as opposed to their academic counterparts (McGill). Additionally, as the history field expands to include digital history, the scholarship and scholarly communication being done in this sub-field is causing similar issues as that in public history (Brennan, 6-7). Overall, it appears that the types of scholarship done in the field of history is broadening which is leading to new types of scholarly communication methods, however not much has changed in how scholarly work, communication, and engagement are being evaluated which places non-traditional and non-academic historians at a disadvantage to their traditional, academic colleagues.
Ahlberg, Kristen, Bill Bryans, Edward Countryman, John R Dichtl, Debbie Ann Doyle, Susan Ferentinos, Kathleen Franz, Constance B Schulz, and Gregory E Smoak. “Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian (Updated 2017).” AHA. American Historical Association, 2017. https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-standards-and-guidelines-of-the-discipline/tenure-promotion-and-the-publicly-engaged-academic-historian.
Brennan, C. “Digital humanities, digital methods, digital history, and digital outputs: History writing and the digital revolution.” History Compass. 2018; 16:e12492.
https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12492
Clements, Kendrick A. “Promotion and Tenure Criteria for Faculty in Applied History.” The
Public Historian 6, no. 2 (1984): 51–61. https://doi.org/10.2307/3376914.
McGill, Alicia Ebbitt. 2018. "Examining the Pedagogy of Community-Based Heritage Work through an International Public History Field Experience." The Public Historian 40 (1): 54-83. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2018.40.1.54
Schulz, Constance B., and Kendrick Clements. “Revisiting a History Department’s Tenure and
Promotion Guidelines: A Response to James B. Gardner.” The Public Historian 21, no. 2 (1999): 89–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/3379294.
I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I have completed the graded portion BEFORE looking at anyone else's work on this assignment. Signed Rebecca Wade