Public history today

HERE is no history here.” This was my comment

to which I was invited to speak by

The main highlights were fancy cars and a TV celebrity who talked about aliens despite

exhibit of presidential cars by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines ( NHCP). If this was a real history convention, I thought, they should have at least also highlighted in their posters the most famous Filipino historian, Ambeth Ocampo. Eventually, in subsequent years, they added a tagline, “Manila’s Biggest Entertainment Convention.” So yeah, of course, it was about the channel not the subject.

I was invited a second time in

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of duty in the country tomorrow) to speak about the role of Manuel Quezon in saving the Jews. I even became a judge in the History Quiz Bee organized by my friend professor Alvin Campomanes and his company

That year, I had a rethink. Yes, this might not be the history convention that I have in mind (we organize conferences for historians, teachers and educators in our historical organizations), but it serves a certain purpose. The highlight may not be history, but in the end, history wins altogether.

Yes, a lot of people came for the celebrities, toys, martial arts, even weapons, but also there were more talks by historians, including Ambeth Ocampo and my professor Ricardo José, that they were able to attend. They were also made aware that there are

Mai Logroño who are so devoted to telling the stories of World War

- mentaries. People will also see that history can come alive with

in their colonial and heroic cosplays, artworks that are inspired by historical events, or even young entrepreneurial artists who make cool stuff like stickers and postcards featuring historical characters.

The convention also destroyed the notion that you cannot earn money in the study of the past. Shops that sell memorabilia, old books, stamps, coins like Dekada, George Bonsai or the Filipinas Stamp Collectors’ Club were also there echoing “Pawn Stars” or “The Pickers.” The booths of mainstream comics creators like Epik Studios, and of the produc-

( showing on theaters on September 5) demonstrated that we can have stories inspired by our history and culture using the popular genre.

History Con may not fall in with a historian’s concept of a history convention, but it opens our minds to the countless possibilities and opportunities that can be created if we utilize and appropriate history.

And I realized, History Con mirrors the realm and scope of “public history” today.

According to Ludmilla Jordanova, “public history is popular history — it is seen or read by large numbers of people and has mostly been designed for a mass audience.” But even the term public is too broad a term (the academe is also part of the “public”). That’s why instead of

I propose to translate it as

because “refers to a particular sector of our society which usually doesn’t prioritize history in their daily discourse — the common folk.

Although the term “public history” was only used in the Philippines very recently, it has been recognized as an important and mainstream part of the discipline time, practitioners of public history were looked down or altogether ignored by those in academe. When I was younger, I heard a professor lambasting a colleague for writing short pieces in newspapers and collecting them into books, and calling him “mediocre.”

But even as a professional historian, I decided to engage in the media because I myself was lured to the discipline by the columns of Ambeth Ocampo and the documentaries narrated by Joonie Gamboa. In fact, even before academic history, public history was already being practiced in this country by people like José Rizal, Mariano Ponce and Epifanio de los Santos. That

by the fact that Bonifacio’s life was recorded without footnotes.

Recently, recognized academicians like Dr. Ma. Serena Diokno — who formerly chaired the NHCP and modernized its museums — have embraced the importance of public history. A Philippine Historical Association conference on the theme will be

and will hopefully be an important turning point to further the collaboration of academic and practitioners of public history to work together to bridge the gaps and, in the late Dean Gloria Santos’ words, “bring history closer to the people.”