Saturday, April 4 update

We’re into the winding-down phase of what has been a very busy schedule in Providence. Here’s what participants have been saying today on the conference blog:

• Janna Bennett is thinking about material culture and the power of objects.
  
• Kathleen Hulser reports on discussions about what themes are likely to be central to public historical approaches to the Civil War sesquicentennial.
  
• Denise Meringolo reflects on the public history educators’ breakfast, and issues raised there about the expansion of public history programs in a shrinking economy.
  
• Mary Rizzo blogs about the “Public History as Work” working group session, and the many difficulties of defining this kind of labor.
  
• And speaking of definitional difficulties, the “Whither the Field?” session tackled the long-standing and probably unanswerable question “what is public history and how do we explain it to people outside the field?”