If historical culture is the specific and particular ways that a society engages with its past
this book aims to situate the professional practice of public history now emerging across the
world within that framework. It links the increasingly varied practices of memory and
history-making such as genealogy podcasting re-enactment family histories memoir writing
film-making and facebook histories with the work that professional historians do both in and
out of the academy. Making Histories asks questions about the role of the expert and notions of
authority within a landscape that is increasingly concerned with connection to the past and
authenticity. The book is divided into four parts: 1. Resistance Rights Authority 2. Memory
Memorialization Commemoration 3. Performance Transmission Reception 4. Family Private Self
The four sections outline major themes emerging in public history across the world in the 21st
century which are all underpinned by the impact of new media on historical practice and our
central argument for the volume which advocates a more capacious definition of what constitutes
'public history'.
