The geological concept ‘the Anthropocene’ circulates widely outside Earth System Science – in museum communities, public culture, social sciences, and amongst social science and humanities scholars, artists, activists and public historians too. It is an evident idea for public historians today working with environmental history to engage with a concept that successfully and popularly bridges academic and public interests. This article discusses the concept of the Anthropocene within public environmental history’s historiography and brings in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s influential discussions from the academic field of history and theory about the non-synchronous temporalities geological time and historical time. The article categorizes public environmental history’s methodological approaches since the field emerged in the 1990s, revealing the important concepts being landscapes, human-nature interactions, climate change, sustainability and the Anthropocene. It concludes that the Anthropocene is a concept that can further develop public environmental history but that it also a paradox to the field potentially affecting a core idea in public history – relationships to publics. This has to do with temporal implications of the concept: it squeezes the temporality of memory important to public history and humans out of view; it imposes an extremely slow and long chronological time that is unfamiliar if not foreign to ordinary people to perceive of; it carries with it the idea about a future without humans and other species of today.

Introduction

This special issue of Public History Review has been edited by Fiona McKergow, Geoff Watson, David Littlewood and Carol Neill and serves as a sampler of recent work in the field of public history from Aotearoa New Zealand. The articles are derived from papers presented at 'Ako: Learning from History?', the 2021 New Zealand Historical Association conference hosted by Massey University Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa. The cover image for this special issue shows Taranaki Maunga viewed from a site near the remains of a redoubt built by colonial forces during the New Zealand Wars.

Abstract
 In recent years there has been ongoing controversy in the United States regarding monuments and place names commemorating the Confederate cause in the American Civil War. The following discussion focuses on Monument Avenue in the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. This was one of the most prominent locations of Confederate commemoration until statues along the avenue began to be removed during 2020. While also needing to be seen in the immediate context of events in mid-2020, these removals followed a process of investigation and consultation carried out by Richmond City Council. This produced a report which is now a useful resource for a case study investigating Monument Avenue and the broader issues its history helps to illustrate.

In an era of reconciliation and truth-telling, many have questioned the symbolic power of statues. A storm of controversy across the globe galvanised an electric energy in which many statues were damaged or toppled. Statues became lightning rods for social conflict. This article explores earlier clashes over statues in Perth in the late 1970s and 1980s, revealing that while the statue of a colonial figure was untouchable despite the dark side of his history, the statue of an Aboriginal leader erected to recognise Western Australia’s First Peoples was decapitated. The article concludes with a discussion of methods for dealing with the dark history of these silent sentinels from the past.

Understanding History’s history requires reading and analysing the texts it has produced across time, and the diverse historians who made them. In settler-colonial societies like Australia, understanding the power and process of that curation is especially urgent. This discussion briefly explores aspects of the recent ‘statue wars’ in Australian history and argues that the one constant across these many understandings of Australia over time, is this: History curates the past.

This contribution considers the current debates about the place of monuments, such as the statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park, which reached a recent high point during the Black Lives Matter protests across Australia in mid 2020. While removing contentious statues from public view may address concerns about their unwanted presence, we must ensure that the contested history they embody is not also erased from society’s memory. We need to develop an acceptable framework for dealing with such monuments within their historical context. Ultimately, there is no single answer to the question: should the vestiges of flawed historical narratives stay or go? It depends on the circumstances of each case. But some things are clear. There is a need for Australia to redress historical and current wrongs against First Nations people. 
 

This article reports on Foodbank Histories, a multi-organisational project connecting oral histories and social justice at Newcastle West End Foodbank (NWEF). Foodbank Histories recorded interviews with clients, volunteers, and supporters of NWEF, aiming to raise awareness of food poverty and generate income for the foodbank. We outline the proliferation of foodbanks in contemporary Britain, and situate Newcastle in its socio-political and geographical contexts. The article reviews the methodology and epistemology of this collaborative project, and particularly the challenges of coproduction. It also details the ongoing public outputs from this dynamic project.

One Small World: the history of the Addison Road Community Centre was independently written and funded through a series of grants. While conceived as a history of place, it is also a history of the organisation that presently occupies the site, the Addison Road Community Centre (ARCCO). The Centre has had an ambivalent relationship to its past. After 60 years as an army depot, in 1976 it became a community centre. The strict discipline of the army was replaced by a very different ethos and political outlook; in fact, its antithesis. As a consequence, the Centre had an uneasy relationship to the history of the site, particularly its army past, which was underappreciated and little valued. ARCCO has recently re-engaged with its public history, but in the process it veered off into mythology. The paper explores the ANZAAC Centenary celebration at Addison Road of horses in war in 2015, and the part funding played in creating myth rather than history. It then considers the role of the Department of Urban and Regional Development in the creation of the Centre in 1975-76 and ARCCO’s attachment to its story of radical origins.
 KEYWORDSAddison Road Community Centre; Department of Urban and Regional Development; ANZAC Centenary; army; Marrickville; multiculturalism

This commentary on four case studies of transnational public history projects or experiences teases out the pedagogical implications. Financial and logistical aspects present challenges to designing collaborative initiatives that reach across national boundaries, and must be addressed. However, in order to tap the full educational value, transnational public history endeavors should also contribute to the intellectual core of public history curricula.