Section on family history, edited by Tanya Evans and Jerome de Groot

Tanja Evans, Emerging questions in family history studies

Tanya Evans/Jerome de Groot, Introduction: Emerging Directions for Family History Studies

This introduction charts the rise of family history across the globe and its international impact upon culture, biomedicine, and technology. It introduces the contributions to this special issue from interdisciplinary scholars based in the US, Canada, Brazil, Europe, Australia and India that have collaborated internationally over the past three years. It argues that public historians need to take the practice of family history seriously and that all scholars can learn from its collaborative, integrated, international practice. We are presented with overwhelming evidence of the need to decentralize and trouble the Eurocentrism of existing historical scholarship. This special issue provides a platform for the conversations we have been having about family history over the past three years and encourages others to join in.

Sarah Abel/ Krystal S. Tsosie, Family History and the Global Politics of DNA

The global DNA ancestry industry appeals to various “markets”: diasporic groups seeking to reconstruct lost kinship links; adoptees looking for biological relatives; genealogists tracing their family trees; and those who are merely curious about what DNA can reveal about their identity. However, the language of empowerment and openness employed by DNA ancestry-testing companies in their publicity materials masks the important commercial and private interests at stake. Drawing particularly on the experiences of Native and Indigenous American communities, this article highlights some of the contradictions and dilemmas engendered by the industry, and questions to what extent its practices can empower users without infringing upon the rights of other groups.

Ashley Barnwell/ Laura King, Family History Collaborators in Conversation

Ashley Barnwell and Laura King converse about their collaborations with family historians in Australia and England. They reveal the potential uses of collaboration when challenging understandings of ‘the family’, de-colonizing and declassing historical scholarship on the family and the wellbeing benefits for family history researchers and carers.

Interview Jerome de Groot “The Genealogical sublime”: An Interview with Julie Creet.

Julie Creet’s The Genealogical Sublime, a book about the development of genealogy databases and their effect on genealogical consciousness, is forthcoming from University of Massachusetts Press in February 2020. Jerome de Groot interviewed her about this project and the way the book deals with archives, religion, and the uncanny.

Kristyn Harman, The Roles of Authenticity and Immediacy in Engaging Family Historians in Online Learning Designed to Advance Academic Skills.

A rapid increase in the availability of digitized archival resources of relevance to family historians together within creasing individual fascination with genealogical research led to the University of Tasmania introducing a fully online Diploma of Family History in 2016. The course’s emphasis on authenticity through a variety of modalities and the sense of immediacy with which its online learning environment is imbued combine to engage and retain students’ interest as they focus on locating and contextualizing their own ancestors as research subjects. Permeating family history with academic skills promotes best practice in locating, analyzing, storing, and publicly presenting family-centric research materials for the edification of current and future generations.

Ewa Jurczyk-Romanowska, Practical Solutions: Genealogy and the Potential of Public Pedagogy in Poland

The article deals with the development of genealogy in Poland, indicates its interdisciplinary character, as well as the socio-political context of its development. In particular, the possibility of using the genealogical passion of older people as a motivating factor to undertake education in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) was highlighted. As an example of good practice, the assumptions and preliminary conclusions of the research carried out within the Learning Tree project, which was implemented in Poland, Turkey and Italy, are presented. On the basis of the research it is stated that genealogy can be a factor encouraging the adoption of computer education by seniors, and consequently contribute to reducing the level of digital exclusion of older people by increasing their participation in the information society.

Conversation

Interview: Andreas Etges/ David Dean, “A Fool’s errand”: Lonnie Bunch and the Creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

PH in

David Dean/ John C. Walsh, Some Reflections on Public History in Canada Today.

This article offers a reflection on the state of public history in Canada today. The authors focus on four particularly significant and related developments: the growth of the field within universities and colleges; theways in which public history has helped re-shape research agendas; the influence of public history work out-side academia; and Canada’s role in the ongoing process of what has been dubbed‘the internationalization’of public history. These developments reveal an intellectually rigorous, politically aware, and socially engagedpublic history that challenges boundaries in exciting and productive ways. The authors offer links so readerscan explore recent controversies, issues, and debates in Canadian public history.

Reviews

Joanna Wojdon: Andersen,Tea Sindbæk and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa: Disputed Memory: Emotions and Memory Politics in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

Christine Gundermann: Paul Ashton and Alex Trapeznik: What is Public History Globally? Working with the Past in the Present.