History

This program was created by a core group of faculty in Architecture, Anthropology, and History with key partners at the Minnesota Historical Society. These faculty had been advising students in masters programs on Cultural Heritage Management and Heritage Conservation and Preservation, as well as Ph.D. students with aspirations to careers in public history and museums. As a group we noted that the strictly disciplinary orientations of our programs were not best serving these students. Our MNHS colleagues could offer professional development experiences to students; but we also observed that historical and heritage organizations were often lacking the critical lenses on their institutions as lacking in diverse perspectives and having significant social barriers to professional entry.

So we set out to create a program which was truly interdisciplinary, provided opportunities for hands-on experiential learning, and aimed to directly expand the voices represented in our fields. Several smaller programs and project collaborations helped to shape this program. One was the former Museum Fellows program, which coupled a one-semester seminar with paid summer internships at MNHS. Another is the Humanities Action Lab, which produces public exhibits on issues of social urgency through a coalition of universities’ public history courses. We also drew upon existing faculty-driven community engagement and social justice projects to model how to support student participation and professional development. The heart and mission of these projects is well demonstrated by the Mellon Foundation-funded Minnesota Transform project, which many of our students worked with.

The program launched in 2017 with the terminal masters program and the graduate minor. With significant support from the Mellon Foundation and the Good Family Foundation, we have mentored numerous cohorts of students, and cheered their professional success. Learning from them we have adjusted the curriculum and the professional experiences to adapt to the changes in the fields and our students’ needs. We encourage you to explore their work through the Projects and Collaborations page.

For a more in-depth account of how the program was created, read the chapter “Challenging the Silo Mentality: Creating a Heritage Studies and Public History Program at the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Historical Society” (Hayes et al authors) in the volume History and Approaches in Heritage Studies, edited by Phyllis Messenger and Sudan Bender and published by the University Press of Florida (2019).