2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

In a period where the humanities overall is under increasing pressure from a neoliberal imperative, the role of history in public has become increasingly fraught.  Seemingly an object of competing desires, “History” is deployed by multiple interests each struggling to validate their goals with the authority of a particular past. Academic historians often find themselves on the outside looking in on this process, as their archival research and usually quietly published work makes its way into public debates in fractured and contentious sound bites. The historian trained by the academy is increasingly being disappeared from the “History,” a function of the growing contempt for the academy found in American popular and political culture.

 This roundtable will discuss the current relationship between historians and the public.  How does our work translate when it enters the wider community in an era of mass digital distribution with its character of generalized knowledge and lack of  attribution? Who needs historians when Google puts the world at your fingertips? What are the wider implications of this trend for the research we undertake and our ability to stay connected to our findings? Is it important that we stay visible as our work leaves our hands? How can we become a part of not only the conversation our work evokes but also maintain our relevance to the widely disparate forums in which it is invoked?