Going Public

Modern New Zealand history is being told in new ways to new audiences: in museums, on the Internet, in researching Treaty claims, for example. Many of the contributors to this selection of essays on public history have played active roles in its development and expansion.

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This is a collection of essays in the rapidly growing field of public history. The essays are short think-pieces by leading writers and scholars, which explore the connections between specific aspects of public history and the broader field of New Zealand history in general and show some new and challenging ways of looking at the past. The contributions cover new media, academic vs public history, the Waitangi Tribunal, Treaty claims research, official war history, government history, the origins of public history, museums, heritage, freelance research and writing, public history in popular culture, and state-funded reference histories.