Summary: <p>Like many folks around the country, you might have spent the last three evenings watching Doris Kearns Goodwin’s <a href="https://www.history.com/shows/washington">Washington</a> documentary series on the History Channel.</p> <p>Documentaries are a form of public history, which we might define loosely as making historical knowledge available and accessible for the public’s benefit.</p> <p>At Mount Vernon, we think about how to do this work a great deal. How can we create frameworks for public understanding of the past that balances expertise with accessibility?</p> <p>On today’s episode, Jeanette Patrick discusses her efforts to make the Washingtons, Mount Vernon, and their respective histories engaging for the public.</p> <p>Patrick is Mount Vernon’s Digital Researcher and Writer, which is another way of saying “public historian,” and she is responsible for a goodly portion of the historical content you’ll find on our websites.</p> <p>You’ll hear Patrick describe some of the ways that Mount Vernon decides which public history projects to pursue, and how she became a public historian in the first place.</p> <p><strong>About Our Guest:</strong></p> <p>Jeanette Patrick is Mount Vernon's Digital Researcher and Writer. Among her many responsibilities, she serves as Associate Editor of the <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/"><em>Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington</em></a>. He holds an MA in Public History from James Madison University. She is a former Program Manager at the National Women's History Museum in Washington, D.C.</p> <p><strong>About Our Host: </strong></p> <p>Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/">Center for Digital History</a> at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the<a href="http://archives.law.virginia.edu/catalogue/"> 1828 Catalogue Project</a> and the <a href="http://scos.law.virginia.edu/">Scottish Court of Session Project</a>. He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.</p>
