Greetings and happy new year from the Public History Project! Or should we say the soon-to-be Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History? That’s right, it’s official! We’re thrilled to announce that the Project will continue its work as a new permanent center on campus!

Keep reading for more info on what’s to come, along with your standard newsletter fare like events and book recommendations! 

The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Public History Project is a multi-year effort to uncover and give voice to those who experienced, challenged, and overcame prejudice on campus. As always, if you have a story to share, an event you think should be researched, or a person you think has been overlooked, please email us at publichistoryproject@wisc.edu. 
 
UW Archives
So, more on the big news — The Public History Project’s mission will continue with a new name and a new home on campus but with the same dedication to uncovering and sharing histories of exclusion and resistance at the university. 

Following the overwhelmingly positive reception of the Project’s work over the past four years, including the successful launch of the Sifting & Reckoning exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art in fall 2022, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin has announced that it will continue as Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, housed within the Division of Teaching and Learning. Its full-time staff will be devoted to educating the campus community about the university’s past in ways that will enrich the curriculum, inform administrative decisions, and bolster efforts to achieve a more equitable university. Naming the center after Chancellor Emerita Blank is a wonderful way to acknowledge and honor her central role in creating the Public History Project.

The university anticipates having the new center up and running by mid-summer, which is when the Public History Project, designed as a limited initiative, will end. 

Many details related to the new center are still being discussed and will be shared with the campus community as planning continues, including the possibility of permanent space on campus for all or parts of the physical Sifting & Reckoning exhibition. Watch this space for more news in the coming months!
 
Interested in ways to incorporate the Public History Project’s research and resources into instruction? Want a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Sifting & Reckoning exhibition? Join Project staff and the Center for Teaching, Learning & Mentoring for Teaching at UW: The Public History Project in the Classroom and Beyond.

Wednesday, February 15, 2023 from 1:00-2:30pm at Memorial Union and via Zoom.

 
Each month Project Director Kacie Lucchini Butcher will share a book, podcast, movie, quote, or something else she thinks has been adding to the PHP. We're calling it "From The Desk of KLB"

This month From The Desk of KLB, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

This bold, wideranging book fundamentally reexamines basic elements of human society from property, agriculture, and cities, to democracy, slavery, and civilization itself, drawing on archeological and anthropological research to challenge longstanding assumptions about the history of our species.
 
As always, if you have a story to share, an event you think should be researched, or a person you think has been overlooked, please email us at publichistoryproject@wisc.edu.