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Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores the ways public history can serve as a tool to teach and share environmental history with students and the general public. Public history courses require students to research, design, and build an exhibit while considering the importance and impact of public-facing work.

Contribution long abstract:

Public and environmental historian Martin Melosi implores public historians to more openly explore local environmental histories. In his oft-cited article, “Public History and the Environment,” Melosi argues that environmental history can be a tool for public audiences to understand and contextualize modern environmental issues. In an era of unprecedented environmental change, public historians must be equipped to communicate the pressing issues that humanity faces by contextualizing the present in the past. “Let environmental history be a means to make the value of history better understood to the public,” he notes. “Let the richness of our profession offer leadership in understanding the essential relationship of humans to their physical world.” This call guides the public history curriculum at Eastern Illinois University where students recently undertook an environmental history project that explored the long history of the tall-grass prairie. Over the course of the two-semester sequence, students worked closely with a community partner, the Grand Prairie Friends—a nature conservancy based in East-Central Illinois—in order to explore the historic and contemporary conceptions of the Illinois prairie landscape. There are several intended goals to the project:

1) Provide students with hands-on research and public history experience.

2) Provide students with opportunities to work with digital tools.

3) Encourage students to become aware of, and engage with, Illinois prairie environmental history.

4) Connect students with environmental history and study how public history relates to a sense of place and connectedness to the region.