The Public History program is proud to announce that Dr. Martha Norkunas has joined the faculty, beginning with the Fall 2009 semester.

Dr. Norkunas holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University's Folklore Institute. She is the author of The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History and Ethnicity in Monterey, California (SUNY Press, 1993) and Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002/ Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006). She has worked with museums, historic sites, and nonprofits across the country on issues of memory, identity, gender, and the representation of minority voices. She is also an oral historian and has been involved in a number of oral history projects on industrial and labor history, immigration, racial identity, and gender. She was formerly on the faculty at the University of Texas-Austin, teaching interdisciplinary teams of graduate students to think critically about memory, history, and culture and to apply their knowledge to social and cultural issues.

In 1999 Norkunas began the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past (ITP) to shed new light on the Texas and American past by researching, interpreting and presenting the histories of women and minority communities. A project of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, ITP has produced award-winning films, Web sites, exhibits, educational materials, posters, brochures, oral history booklets, an in-depth oral history project with African Americans in Texas, and an oral history project exploring mixed-race identity among college students.

In her first semester at MTSU, Dr. Norkunas will be teaching HIST 6994/7994 "Advanced Projects in Public History" as an oral history course, as well as leading the Professional Residency Colloquium. 

Dr. Norkunas brings a wealth of experience as a public historian that will undoubtedly enhance the prestige and visibility of MTSU's Public History program. "My particular areas of expertise are cultural history and oral history. I've been involved in projects documenting the lives of African Americans, women, and people in the labor movement and hope to continue some of that work at MTSU." We welcome Dr. Norkunas to the program and look forward to working with her in the years to come.