History in Public Space

Joanna Wojdon is a professor of history at the University of Wrocław, Poland. Her research interests include public history, Polish American history, history education, and the history of communist propaganda. She edited Public History in Poland (2022) and authored Textbooks as Propaganda. Poland under Communist Rule (2018); Communist Propaganda at School: The World of the Reading Primers from the Soviet Bloc, 1949–1989 (2021); and Polish American History after 1939 (2024). Dorota Wiśniewska is an assistant professor at the Institute of History, University of Wrocław, Poland. Her research concentrates on women’s history, history didactics, and public history. She is the initiator of the International Public History Summer School in Wrocław (since 2018) and co-editor (with Joanna Wojdon) of Public in Public History (Routledge, 2021).

Introduction: Crossroads, Meeting Places, Battlefields. History Discussed and Contested by and for Public Space PART 1: READING HISTORY IN PUBLIC SPACE 1. History and Memory in the Public Spaces of a Pre-industrial Central European City: Warsaw in the Long Eighteenth Century 2. Chicago, Public History, and Historical Discourse 3. Using Public Spaces to Forge National Unity in North Korea PART 2: DOING HISTORY IN PUBLIC SPACE 4. Lights of Innovation: Interpreting History through Art in Country Houses 5. Transforming Workspaces into Sites of Public History: Former Mineworkers as Stakeholders and Creators at Museal Institutions in Poland and England 6. Be Where the People Are: Public Historical Engagement in the Public Space 7. The “História ao Ar Livre” (“History in the Open”) Project and the Making of Public History in Recife, Brazil PART 3: CHANGING PUBLIC SPACE 8. Memory Wars: The Curation of the History of the First World War in the Public Space of Dublin, 1922−1939 9. Negotiating of “Bottom-up” Public History in Post-Transition Cambodia 10. Decommunization of Public Space in East-Central Europe 11. Cemeteries as Manifestations of History in Public Space PART 4: “UNREAL” SPACE AND HISTORY 12. Revealing Narratives about National Identity in East Prussia’s State Museum. On Reconstructing past Public History Spaces 13. History in Transnational Virtual Public Spaces of Videogames 14. Conclusion: “Pop-Up History”: Taking History to the Streets in Canada’s Capital City