Requirements

The program consists of the following requirements:

1. HISTORY 659 Public History graduate seminar.

2. Two courses in a defined area of public history practice, e.g., archives management*, community and oral history, cultural resource management, digital history/new media, museum studies, and writing for popular audiences; students may also design their own program, with the consent of their certificate adviser. At least one of these courses must be outside the student’s home department.

Some sample tracks:

Museum Studies
HISTORY 662 Museum and Historic Site Interpretation or HISTORY 661 American Material Culture and ART-HIST 634 History of Decorative Arts, ART-HIST 782 Museum Studies or ANTHRO 597AE New Approaches to Public Commemorations and Social Memory

Historic Preservation
LANDARCH 609 Studio X –Historic Preservation and ART 597V American Urbanism or ART-HIST 642 19th-Century Architecture; or LANDARCH 544 History and Theory or HISTORY 697U/797U Landscape and Memory

Writing for Popular Audiences
HISTORY 691W Writing History and JOURNAL 497M Art of the Profile

New Media
HISTORY 693B Digital History

Cultural Resource Management
ANTHRO 525 Archaeology and Law and HISTORY 662 Museum and Historic Site Interpretation or LANDARCH 597B Cultural Landscapes

3. 300 hours (6 credits) of internship experience. Internships may be paid or unpaid, but must conform to the policies set forth at www.umass.edu/history/ph/internship.html . Students may complete this requirement at a single site, or divide the time between two separate sites.

For further information, contact Associate Professor Marla Miller, Public History Program, Herter Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, tel.: (413) 545-1330 fax: (413) 545-6137; website: www.umass.edu/history/ph.

*The Archival Management track is available through courses at Simmons College, offered on the campus of Mount Holyoke College. See simmons.edu/gslis/academics/programs/archives.php.