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PUBLIC HISTORY ---- Kiplin
Comparative Public History:
The United States and the United Kingdom
Summer Field Course
Since 1990 the Public History Program at the University of South Carolina
has offered an international summer program in comparative practices in
the fields of archives, museums, and historic preservation.
The purpose of the course is two-fold: to give students an understanding
of the international professional dimension of each of these three fields
and to provide an opportunity to see how the work of these fields is inter-related.
The three-credit course gives students a chance to compare procedures and
theory in these fields between the United States and Great Britain through
a series of meetings with professionals in England as well as hands on
work in a case study situation. For several years the course has
been based at an historic seventeenth-century Jacobean country house. Kiplin Hall, the site for the first four weeks of the summer course, is located
in North Yorkshire, half way between York and Durham, near the county seat
of Northallerton and the historic fortified medieval city of Richmond.
Originally built in 1625 by George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore and
founder of the colony of Maryland, the Hall was extensively renovated in
the nineteenth century. Since 1971, it has been administered by a private
trust as an historic site. An additional fifth week of the course is spent
in London meeting with professional staff from national offices of the
Public Record Office, the National Trust and English Heritage, as well
as at London area museums and archives.
At Kiplin, students and course faculty led by Dr. Constance B. Schulz live in renovated quarters that are part of the original
brick outbuildings of Kiplin Hall. Projects
in which students have participated at Kiplin Hall include archival processing
of family papers, a catalogue and needs assessment of the large library,
an inventory of decorative arts in the Hall, and research into local North
Yorkshire records to document aspects of the property's development. Some
course activities take place in nearby York, where staff at the Yorkshire
Museum, the York Minister Archives and Educational Departments, the York
Archaeological Trust, and the York Castle Museum have provided behind-the-scenes
tours and lectures. Other course sites have included Leeds and Middlesbrough,
industrial midlands cities, where students learned about the inter-relatedness
of city planning, preservation of factory buildings, museum and park development.
Staff from the British Library, the British Museum, the regional and national
offices of the British National Trust, the Public Records Office, and the
Historic House Association, have also contributed to the program through
lectures, demonstrations, and site visits.
Click here for a sampling of course
sites
 For information contact
Dr.
Constance B. Schulz
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