Fall 2020 News

We at Omnia History hope that you, your loved ones, and your communities are surviving this challenging year. Like many of you, we have been focusing on navigating multiple overlapping crises and adjusting to continually changing circumstances. Through it all, we have continue to be guided by our ever more urgent mission to use the past to promote social change.

Congratulations, Dr. Hope Shannon!

In February just before the pandemic hit, Hope successfully defended her dissertation, "Mobilizing the Past: Local History and Community Action in Modern Metropolitan Chicago." Congratulations, Dr. Shannon!

National Leadership

In March, Rachel joined the Board of Directors of the National Council on Public History. Just before joining the board, Rachel helped NCPH quickly pivot its Annual Meeting to a fully virtual format by coordinating a poster session on Instagram and awards ceremony on Twitter. Since then, NCPH has continued to weather the storm, support public historians, and prepare for another virtual meeting in 2021.

In May, Hope was appointed the executive director of the Urban History Association. Hope has been working with the organization to reimagine the Executive Director’s role within the UHA as it transitions from a traditional academic service role into a fully professional position.

Teaching & Researching in a Pandemic

Both Hope and Rachel have been teaching undergraduate courses at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University, respectively. The pandemic has underscored just how important compassion and flexibility are to good pedagogy, and we hope these characteristics find a permanent place in all classrooms when Covid-19 is finally behind us.

We are also still hard at work on a Historic Resource Study for the Weir Farm National Historic Site in Connecticut. While we haven't been able to physically visit archives this year, we have continued to work remotely thanks to stellar archivists and digital collections.

Career Diversity for Historians

Hope is currently working with the American Historical Association (AHA) on two short-term, grant-funded projects: updating the AHA's "Where Historians Work" database, which tracks career outcomes for historians with PhDs, and processing Covid-19 collecting initiatives for inclusion in the AHA's Covid-19 Bibliography. Her work with the AHA will wrap up at the end of December.

Protest, Politics, & Policing

Rachel continues to facilitate workshops, lead seminars, and create educational resources on Chicago history. She recently completed a digital collection for the classroom on Chicago's legacy of conflict, led an adult education seminar on women in early Chicago politics, and is preparing a teacher seminar on the history of policing in nineteenth-century Chicago. She will also be offering a Virtual Walking Tour of Chicago through the Newberry Library this winter. Click here to learn more about Omnia's courses and workshops.

A Request

At Omnia History, we are grateful to be able to make a living by using the past to promote social change. However, many of our fellow workers in the museum, higher education, and public history worlds have been suffering from layoffs and economic precarity during these trying times. If you are able, we urge you to consider donating to Museum Workers Speak Relief Fund to directly support cultural workers in need.

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