Exploring the Past

About two weeks ago I wrote a post in which I chimed into the discussion about whether or not Jon Stewart could be considered a “public historian.” Long story short, I agreed with a poster named Erik Greenburg who commented that “a public historian should be someone grounded in the arguments, practices, and habits of mind of an academically trained historian,” which meant, in my estimation, that Stewart would not meet that standard. I clarified that one doesn’t need to be academically trained to “do history,” but that they should make an attempt to understand the methods and ways in which historians “think historically.”

After my blog post, another person, Brown University professor Steven Lubar, commented with the following words:

Let’s think about a “big tent” definition of public historian. Limiting it to “someone grounded in the arguments, practices, and habits of mind of an academically trained historian” leaves out…

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