Providence

FRIDAY SESSIONS
PLENARY SESSION
5:15 pm – 6:45 pm
Friday
The National Park Service at
100: A Conversation with
Robert Stanton
Solicited by the OAH Committee on National Park
Service Collaboration
#OAH_NPS100
Chair and Commentator: Gary Nash, University
of California, Los Angeles
Panelists:
• William Cronon, University of Wisconsin
• Joan Zenzen, Independent Scholar
• Robert Stanton, National Park Service
NPS
@
100
This plenary explores the significance of the 2016
Centennial of the National Park Service 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,
eminent environmental historian William Cronon, and 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 in
which 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's 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 plenary for a
reception co-hosted 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.
National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection, Harpers Ferry Center, photograph James V. Lloyd. National Park
Service Director Stephen Mather, superintendents, and their families at the Superintendents Conference, Mesa Verde, 1925
LEGEND
Public History
Teaching
Community College
Professional Development
RHODE ISLAND CONVENTION CENTER
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