Providence

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
PLENARY SESSIONS, cont.
The National Park Service
at 100: A Conversation with
Robert Stanton
Friday April 8, 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm
Solicited by the OAH Committee on National Park
Service Collaboration
#OAH_NPS100
Chair and Commentator: Gary Nash, University of California, Los Angeles
Panelists:
• Robert Stanton, National Park Service
• William Cronon, University of Wisconsin
• Joan Zenzen, Independent Scholar
@
NPS
100
This plenary session explores the significance of the 2016
centennial of the National Park Service (NPS) and the
importance of leadership to the history of the agency.
Chaired by Gary Nash (a member of the NPS Second
Century Commission and coauthor of the OAH-sponsored study
Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service),
the session will feature a conversation between former NPS director
Robert Stanton, the eminent environmental historian William
Cronon, and the NPS scholar and public historian Joan Zenzen.
OAH collaboration with the NPS has provided historians with an
opportunity to apply their historical expertise to a public purpose:
building bridges between scholarship and public audiences, and
between the academy and the world of the NPS. This wide-ranging
and provocative discussion will consider the agency’s past, present,
and future, and the ways the OAH can contribute to shaping the
agency’s next century.
Nearly 300 million Americans every year visit the more than 400
units of the National Park Service, and still more encounter NPS
history through the National Register of Historic Places, the National
Historic Landmarks Program, and other efforts to document,
preserve, and interpret the nation’s past. The vision and health of
what is often called America’s largest outdoor classroom is of vital
concern to all historians. Please join us for a lively panel.
The audience is invited to remain after the session for a reception
cohosted by the OAH Public History Committee and the Committee
on the OAH/NPS Collaboration and to engage the panel in further
discussion of the past and future of this important agent of popular
historical knowledge.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
God, Gotham, and Modernity
Saturday, April 9, 5:15 pm
Jon Butler, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of
American Studies, History, and Religious Studies,
Yale University; Adjunct Research Professor of
History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
RHODE ISLAND CONVENTION CENTER
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