The Presence of the Past, 28 Years Later

 I’ve entered the stage of my comps studying which focuses on my major field, so of course I’ve been revisiting the formative literature of what is now called “public history.” After Micheal Frisch’s “A Shared Authority,” and John Kuo Wei Tchen’s “ Creating a Dialogic Museum,” no text looms larger than Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s “The Presence of the Past.” 

The book is based on a study that was prompted, in part, by the “culture wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s in which Lynne Cheney, head of the NEH during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, figured prominently. Cheney lamented Americans’ lack of knowledge of a shared history, warning that this lack of knowledge would lead to a lack of the social cohesion necessary for democratic life.

In the study that led to “The Presence of the Past,” Rosenzweig, Thelen, and their team of enthusiastic graduate students, supported by the NEH, set out to learn more about low Americans engaged with “the past.” In pre-survey work, they learned that “history,” associated with the kind of classroom instruction Cheney was hoping to revive, was almost universally denigrated as “boring,” “dry,” or irrelevant. And yet, Americans cared deeply about the past, mining it for personal inspiration and using it as a source in their efforts to make meaning of the present.

In their reflections at the end of the book, Rosenzweig and Thelen offered different concerns about what the results meant for American history and culture as a whole. Rosenzweig was alarmed by the focus on the personal over the collective that was overwhelmingly present among white respondents. Thelen raised concerns about declining trust in public education and civic institutions. Both scholars approached their work from a hopeful mindset born of the New Social History of the 1960s. Cheney, on the other hand, approached her criticism from a place of alarm at what she perceived as a dissolution of American cultural cohesion, and a lack of general knowledge.

Twenty-eight years later, I am struck by how much these seemingly opposing figures in the “culture war” had in common. The desire to find a shared basis for thinking about the humanities in American life, the importance of truthful and comprehensive storytelling at public history sites, these appear to me to be common concerns. 

"Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation" exhibit panel at the President's House Site in Philadelphia, PA, 2022. The panels were removed on 1/26/2026 in compliance with an executive order.

Screenshot from WHYY Article covering protests against the removal of the "Freedom and Slavery" exhibition.

Now, as we witness federal cultural agencies tasked with removing interpretation at sites administered by the Park Service— slavery history at the President’s House in Philadelphia, labor history at Lowell in Massachusetts, Native history at Little Bighorn and elsewhere— and the active groundswell of public protest, it is evident how much people care about the past, and how much they want to share histories of struggle at public sites. These histories of struggle nurture the democratic spirit. Ultimately, efforts to mute that spirit are a threat to all of us, even if we disagree on how to live together and realize our ideals. A present without a past is a much scarier prospect.