Interpreting Energy at Museums and Historic Sites

Leah S. Glaser, PhD is a Professor of History and Coordinator of the Public History Program at Central Connecticut State University. She earned her B.A. from Tufts University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in history and public history from Arizona State University. She has worked in the field of public history and historic preservation for the last thirty years, consulting with municipal, state, and federal agencies, including positions at the United States Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service. For the last twenty years, while publishing around water power and electricity, she has worked closely with the National Council on Public History to emphasize issues of environmental sustainability through conferences, committee work, and publications.

• PrefaceI. IntroductionII. The Energy of the ForestIII. Water is Life, Water is PowerIV. The Cultural Power of Steam EnergyV. The Power of Fossil Fuels: Energy from Coal, Oil, and GasVI. National Security and Alternative Energy:Nuclear Power During and Beyond the Atomic AgeVII. Emphasizing Energy Diversity: The Past and Future of Renewable EnergyVIII. Energy, Access, and Equity:The Infrastructure of ElectricityIX. Conclusion AppendixTimelineRecommended Reading: Annotated bibliography of resources on energy and energy use.

Glaser challenges history museums and historic sites to flip the narrative of technology as progress. Instead, she poses, let’s reinterpret existing collections and places to ask provocative questions about the production, transmission, and consumption of energy in America as it evolved from a preindustrial society to a highly industrialized and consumption-driven nation? She rightly asserts that adapting to human-induced climate change will require significant cultural shifts in addition to redirecting policy decisions and economic imperatives. To meet this challenge, Glaser provides curators and interpreters with an excellent guide to the historical scholarship and a wealth of case studies that reveal new ways to interrogate the past as we all grope to understand the magnitude of environmental problems before us.