West Baton Rouge Museum Podcast

Presented by Dr. Julia Rose, director of the West Baton Rouge Museum. Her new book, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historical Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), tackles the extraordinary challenges of interpreting histories of slavery, war, genocide and mass oppression. Difficult histories pose significant resistances and challenges for museum workers and visitors. How do we engage visitors in histories that are traumatic, controversial, and shocking? With the rise of social history since the mid-20th century, history workers and educators are grappling with how to engage students and museum visitors in histories that can be too much to bear. The new book, provides a sensitive strategy, for students, educators, museum workers and visitors to develop and teach with compelling and ethical representations about historical individuals, communities and populations who have suffered. The lecture is sponsored by the Louisiana Association of Museums.