
Julia Rose, Director of the West Baton Rouge Museum has a new book that tackles the extraordinary challenges of interpreting histories of slavery, war, genocide and mass oppression. Published by Rowman and Littlefield this May 2016, the new book “Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites” opens with a foreword by Jonathan Holloway, Dean of Yale College entitled, “What We Risk.”
Difficult histories pose significant resistances and challenges for museum workers and visitors. The new book,
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites, offers public historians, museums, and educators a much needed resource to interpret histories of slavery, war and trauma.
The new book, provides a sensitive strategy, which is based in learning theories that are clearly described.
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites is framed by education psychoanalytic theory and positions museum workers, public historians and museum visitors as learners. Through this lens, history workers and educators can develop compelling and ethical representations of historic individuals, communities and populations who have suffered.