I had the good fortune to attend the American Historical Association's 2020 annual meeting. I enjoy the professional development panels the AHA offers, so I made a point of attending panels that discussed broader professional issues and the ways historians can use different technologies to convey history and the historical process. Although I attended very different panels, I noticed a recurring idea emerge across them: Historians who work beyond the professoriate are better placed to know the publics they want to write for and reach with their work. I’ve been thinking about whether this is true.
On the one hand, those of us who work as historians outside of the professoriate usually work for public history institutions and organizations. Sometimes we work for academic-adjacent institutions like university presses and research institutions. Sometimes we work as independent scholars. And sometimes we work in completely different, non-history related fields. All of these career paths offer training and experience in working with publics that differ from the publics professors work with.
For example, historians who work for a public history institution or organization often receive training in prioritizing consideration of those who use and visit their institutions. Why do people visit or join a particular historical institution? What are the narratives the organization can develop and convey that would interest them? What are the narratives or events the institution can develop to expand visitor/member knowledge and understanding about both history and the historical process? What narratives, events, or services can the organization develop to attract new visitors and members? In public history, you have to think about audience.
But you also have to think about audience if you’re a historian who works as a professor. Professors need to think about the audiences for their courses as well as the audience(s) for their publications. So in reality, all historians are trained to think about audiences and have experiences working with different audiences or publics.
Still, there is something to this idea about historians’ knowledge and experiences with different publics. It seemed to resonate with a lot of historians in the room and on Twitter. And I think this “something” involves career goals, time, and field work. These factors impact all historians whether they work inside the professoriate or outside of it.
Career Goals & Time
The career goals for professors vary. They include a desire to move up the professorial career ladder, to do work that can position one’s self to compete for professorships at institutions that better align with their pedagogical, research, and reputation goals, and to conduct research that will make them competitive for external funding for their work. To achieve these goals, professors are incentivized to publish in academic journals and with scholarly presses that can help them put their research in front of those who can help advance their careers. There is little-to-no professional incentive to write and publish for an audience outside of academia, although we know a LOT of historians in the professoriate desire to reach non-specialist audiences with their work.
Those who work in public history, in academic-adjacent institutions, or in non-history jobs struggle to find time to research, write, and publish. Yes, every historian I know says they struggle with finding time for their research and writing, but the struggle for those who work outside of the professoriate is often more intense. Publishing is often not a requirement of (or desired by) non-professorial positions. The supportive infrastructure of summers, sabbaticals, course/work buyouts for fellowships, and research assistance from students doesn’t exist outside of the professorial career track. To publish outside of the professoriate, historians need to perform the valuable work they do in their 40-60 hour per week jobs and then find time and energy during nights, weekends, holidays, and vacations to research and write.
That is not to say there aren’t incentives for those outside of the professoriate to publish. There are incentives. Some outside of the professoriate want to publish to reach audiences that can help them advance their careers. For a public historian, an ability to reach others who work in public history might help them obtain a faculty position in a public history program or help set them up to work as a consultant or in advanced institutional role. Others want to write for the non-specialist audiences they serve, which at times can also help advance their careers. Public historians who prove their ability to reach a large public audience, or a key audience for a specific institution, may find it easier to advance within their organization or obtain work at a different, perhaps more ideal, institution. Historians who work in publishing might want to publish, in part, because the experience of publishing will allow them to have deeper interactions with the authors they work with and in furthering their reputation as a subject-matter expert.
So nearly all historians work within a career path where publishing (and publishing a certain way) could be advantageous for their professional goals and ambitions.
What I think may have been at the heart of the sentiment I heard about how historians who work beyond the professoriate are better placed to know the publics they want to write for and reach comes down to the types of field work different historians perform.
Field Work
When historians talk about reaching “the public” or publics with their work, they almost always mean reaching those beyond the academy. What we forget, or dismiss, is that there are audiences and publics within the academy that many professors reach well because the field work required by their positions provides them with opportunities/experiences to know and understand those audiences at a deep level.
Through the practice of classroom teaching, most professors develop a real expertise in reaching and engaging students. Through a regular practice of peer review, publication, and seminar/conference attendance, professors develop an innate ability to reach their professorial colleagues. The regular field work professors perform allows them to build extensive experience in knowing and reaching the audiences of academia.
Public historians and others who work beyond the professoriate have different opportunities and experiences. They perform field work that offers opportunities to develop deep and innate understandings of non-specialist audiences. And this professional knowledge and experience does place these historians in a better position to reach audiences and publics beyond the academy.
Of course, within all history career fields there are historians who desire to cross over. Some professors want to reach non-specialist publics with their published work and some historians outside of the professoriate want to reach specialist audiences with their published work. Writing requires hard work, but writing for an audience that differs from those you interact with everyday is a real challenge! But it’s not an impossible challenge.
Writing for different audiences
Professors who reach public audiences well put themselves in a position to know the publics they want to write for and reach. Within the field of early America, Erica Dunbar, Alan Taylor, Joanne Freeman, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Zara Anishanslin are doing this work well. These historians make time to seek out and interact with the publics they want to write for. They give public talks at public history institutions, libraries, and other public events. Most are active on Twitter where they tweet not just with their colleagues, but with the publics who are interested in learning more about their historical period.
Similarly, historians outside of the professoriate who want to write for specialist audiences make time and allocate funds to attend seminars and conferences and to publish in specialist journals. These experiences allow them to interact with and get to know the audiences they want to write for and reach.
Knowing and developing an understanding of the audiences you want to write for is a critical component in developing an ability to reach them with your work. Writing history requires research. Historians need to research the history they want to write about and the audience(s) they want to reach with their work.
So I disagree with the idea that those who work beyond the professoriate are better placed to know the publics they want to write for and reach with their work. Most historians know how to reach at least one public because of their regular field work. And if that one public is not who they want to reach with their written work, well, I do think all historians are capable of researching and getting to know the publics they do want to reach. It just requires a bit more time and work and perhaps a conversation with someone who does have experience reaching the audience(s) they want to reach.