Dr. Rebecca Conard

Professor
Director, Public History

CONTACT
E-mail: rebecca.conard@mtsu.edu
Phone: (615) 898-2423
Office Location and Mailing Address: KOM, Room 301E
MTSU Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

FIELDS: Public History, Modern U.S. History, Environmental History

BIOGRAPHY:  As one of the first generation of university-trained public historians, my career has bridged the worlds of practice and public history education. As a practitioner, I often examined the ways in which historical patterns, events, and people had shaped specific places and landscapes. Practice, in turn, sharped my research interests and teaching specialties in environmental history, cultural landscapes, local history, and the history of public history. Currently, I am researching the various strands of practice and professionalization that led to the emergence of public history as a field of study. Additionally, I am involving graduate students in an ongoing study of a local post-emancipation African American community.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 2020, Survey of United States History II
• History 4640, American Environmental History

GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 5640, Environmental History
• History 6010/7010, Historiography
• History 6190/7190, State and Local History
• History 6510/7510, Seminar in Public History
• History 6530/7530, Administration of Historical Organizations
• History 6560/7560, Seminar in Cultural Resource Management
• History 6570, Public History Internship
• History 6610/7610, Essentials of Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource Management

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: 

Conard, Rebecca. "All Men and Women are Created Equal": An Administrative History of Women's Rights National Historical Park. National Park Service: Northeast Region, 2011.

Conard, Rebecca. "The Changing Face of the Country: Environmental History and the Legacy of the Civil War at Stones River National Battlefield." George Wright Forum 28:2 (2011).

Guest Co-editor, "Public History as Reflective Practice." Theme issue of The Public Historian 28, no. 1 (Winter 2006).

SELECTED AWARDS: 

Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award, 2011 – 2012, 2007 – 2008

Appointee, Tennessee Historical Records Advisory Board, 2008 – 2013

Past President, National Council on Public History

WORK IN PROGRESS:

"Professionalizing the Public History Impulse," a book-length manuscript.

EDUCATION:

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara
M.A.,    University of California, Los Angeles.

Click here for full C.V.

Return to Faculty page