Reviewed by:

• Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West ed. by Gregory E. Smoak
• Emily Gowen

In the twelve essays that make up Gregory Smoak’s Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West, the University of Utah’s American West Center comes into view as the contested center of a fifty-year battle to define and expand the parameters of public history.

In one sense the volume is a rich, polyvocal institutional history of the center, and a loving tribute to its founders’ vision. In another sense, though, the volume is an extended meditation on the most pressing questions that animate the field of public history. What sorts of tensions arise when historians, Richard White asks, enter the public sphere? How do we resist the popular urge to instrumentalize history, to make it speak the way we want it to? Or as Liesl Carr Childers puts it, what happens when history is “hostage” to politics? (27). And what would it look like to truly center Native voices in the way we tell stories about the American West?

The volume offers several models of good public history: Michael Childers writes about Hal Rothman, the late historian and public intellectual who sought to “engage the public on its own terms” and “create the ears with which to hear us” (41). Leighton M. Quarles shares lessons from his own work as a historian for the National Park Service, a role in which nationalist mythmaking, tribal memory, environmental preservation, and the mandates of a tourism economy jostle for primacy. As many of the essays insist, a professional historian is uniquely positioned to understand and combat the settler colonial origins of land preservation projects that, in the popular imagination, are often billed as an unalloyed good. Yvette Towersap Tuell calls walking the line between serving Native history and public land management “working on the dark side” (101). But she insists that inhabiting such a vexed position is essential if we are to “better incorporate Native history and local knowledge into . . . policy decisions” (101).

From the adjudication of tribal water rights to the interpretive decisions made on ghost tours, to the creation of new centers for [End Page 88] Native American and Indigenous studies programs, to the digitization of archives, the volume charts the American West Center’s sprawling and complex legacy, and showcases the hard, often frustrating, but richly rewarding work of “doing public history in the American West” (1; emphasis original).

In its best moments the volume lives up to its own definitions of public history, offering a road map to young scholars interested in forging careers that span disciplines, audiences, and institutional constituencies. For those entering the profession today this volume may even feel like a life raft. Its vivid accounting of the wide range of purposes to which a historian’s credentials can be put offers a much more expansive vision of a fulfilling academic career than we often see in discussions of the academy today. To read Western Lands, Western Voices is to get an up-close look at what it’s like to wade into the messy, fascinating, unfinished work of public history in the American West, and perhaps even to be inspired to enter the public sphere oneself. [End Page 89]

审核人：

• 西部土地，西部之声：美国西部公共历史论文集。格雷戈里·E·斯莫克 (Gregory E. Smoak)
• 艾米莉高文

在构成 Gregory Smoak 的Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on the Public History in the American West 的十二篇文章中，犹他大学的美国西部中心被视为定义和扩展参数的五十年斗争的有争议的中心的公共历史。

从某种意义上说，这本书是该中心丰富的、多声部的机构历史，也是对其创始人愿景的充满爱意的致敬。不过，从另一种意义上说，这本书是对活跃公共历史领域的最紧迫问题的延伸思考。理查德·怀特 (Richard White) 问道，当历史学家进入公共领域时，会出现什么样的紧张关系？我们如何抵制流行的将历史工具化的冲动，让它按照我们想要的方式说话？或者正如 Liesl Carr Childers 所说，当历史成为政治的“人质”时会发生什么？(27)。在我们讲述美国西部故事的方式中真正以本土声音为中心会是什么样子？

该卷提供了几种良好的公共历史模型：迈克尔·奇尔德斯 (Michael Childers) 写了哈尔·罗斯曼 (Hal Rothman)，这位已故历史学家和公共知识分子试图“以自己的方式吸引公众”并“创造耳朵来倾听我们的声音”(41)。Leighton M. Quarles 分享了他作为国家公园管理局历史学家的工作中的经验教训，在这个角色中，民族主义神话、部落记忆、环境保护和旅游经济的要求相互竞争。正如许多文章所坚持的那样，专业的历史学家具有独特的优势，可以理解和打击土地保护项目的定居者殖民起源，在大众的想象中，这些项目通常被标榜为纯粹的好处。Yvette Towersap Tuell 称走在为土著历史服务和公共土地管理之间的界限是“在黑暗面工作” (101)。但她坚持认为，如果我们要“更好地将土著历史和当地知识纳入……，那么处于这样一个令人烦恼的位置是必不可少的。. . 政策决定”(101)。

从部落水权的裁决到对幽灵之旅做出的解释性决定，到为[End Page 88]美洲原住民和土著研究项目创建新中心，再到档案数字化，该卷图描绘了美国西部中心的庞大和复杂的遗产，并展示了“在美国西部做公共历史”的艰巨、常常令人沮丧但收获颇丰的工作（1；强调原创）。

在最精彩的时刻，该卷不辜负它自己对公共历史的定义，为有兴趣打造跨越学科、受众和机构选区的职业的年轻学者提供了路线图。对于今天进入这个行业的人来说，这本书甚至感觉像是救生筏。它生动地说明了历史学家的证书可以用于广泛的目的，提供了一个比我们今天在学院讨论中经常看到的更充实的学术生涯的更广阔的视野。阅读Western Lands，Western Voices就是要近距离了解涉足美国西部公共历史的混乱、迷人、未完成的作品是什么感觉，甚至可能受到启发自己进入公共领域。[第 89 页结束]