Some questions I would like to discuss in class:

1. Why did animosity develop between historians and other people doing history in other ways? What are its consequences for the profession and how can that be repaired? Why did academic historians decide to recognize public historians?

2. What is a good working definition of Public History and why has it come to mean that? What are its characteristic features? For that matter what is the definition of the historical profession? In what ways is academic and public history the same or different?

3. In what way does the audience determine how we do history?

4. So is professionalization a bad thing for the field of history? What would the alternatives have been? Is history different from other professions in being open to the amateur?

5. What kind of history does the public need? Is it less objective than academic history? Is it "real" history?

6. Are High School teachers Public Historians?

7. What kind of service to society do public historians provide? Do you agree that academic historians "abdicated their civic responsibility"?

8. What is the "identity crisis" in the field of history and do you think it has been solved?

9. How should public historians be trained? Differently than academic historians?

10. What role do professional associations, journals and conferences play in the field of Public History?

11. What is the significance of the "Public History Movement"?

12. What is the future for historians and history?