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Senior Editor’s Note This is the last issue of American Studies International to be published under my supervision. George Washington University will cease to publish American Studies International with Volume 42. Negotiations are underway with the Mid-America American Studies Association (MASA) and the American Studies Department at the University of Kansas to continue ASI as part of their publication, American Studies. This special double issue (June & October 2004) was planned before I knew that ASI would be leaving George Washington University, but I intended it to promote the work of the GWU American Studies Department in public history. Our past affiliation with the Library of Congress, our 40-year affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution, and our recently established Center for Public History and Public Culture distinguish our department nationally and internationally. Six of the eleven contributors are or have been affiliated with our program and all have made significant contributions to the field. As you will see in the essays, “public history” is a term coined in the 1950s to categorize the work of historians employed outside colleges and universities, but it remains a troublesome label because it often unnecessarily divides the historical profession. The ten essays offer a wide variety of perspectives on the history and practice of public history, but there are some common themes: 1. The tension between national histories and personal histories, explored in the essays by Wilton Corkern, Andrew Gulliford, Toni Lee, Jann Warren-Findley, Denise Meringolo, and Kyoko Kishimoto; 2. The gap between the specialized language of academic historians writing for each other and the language of exhibit labels, park brochures, and popular history, an issue considered by Marla Miller, Barbara Fahs Charles, Corkern, Lee, and Meringolo; 3. Cultural differences, both between nations and within multi-ethnic nations, analyzed by James Horton and Johanna Kardux, Patrick Loughney, Kishimoto, Gulliford, Warren-Findley, and Charles; 4. The ways new technologies have affected our sense of the past and the methods we are using to preserve and interpret it. Miller, Lee, Loughney, Horton and Kardux, and Charles address this issue; 5. The question of authority—who determines what will be preserved from the past? This is the chief concern of all the contributors. I think that readers from all academic disciplines and all nations will find many things of interest in these essays. With specific examples from the Caribbean (Corkern), the Philippines (Loughney), the Netherlands (Horton & Kardux), Australia (Warren-Findley), and Japan (Kishimoto), Germany (Charles), and Native America (Gulliford), the essays illustrate that public history as conceived and practiced in the U.S. has relevance for the definition and presentation of history in most countries. Corkern’s essay calls attention to the economic importance of heritage tourism, history motivated by boosterism and profit, while Horton & Kardux, Loughney, and Kishimoto illustrate the close connections between history and national politics. These and the other articles, review essays, and book reviews in this issue are the work of dedicated historians and other professionals who have volunteered their time and expertise to make ASI an important source of information on the state of American studies. I thank them and all previous contributors for making ASI a success. It has been a privilege to serve as Senior Editor for the past 25 years. I am proud that ASI has helped internationalize the study of the United States. It has been a great pleasure to work with an extraordinarily talented group of doctoral students who did the real work of editing and managing the journal: Wilton Corkern, Perry Frank, Tara Tappert, Frank Millikan, Peggy Brown, Joel Hodson, Lisa Johnson-Bedell, Stephen Kidd, Brian Finnegan, Paul Gardullo, and Shelly McKenzie. I owe thanks too to the many other graduate students who volunteered their time and talents, none more than Tim Walsh who is responsible for our web site and the improvement in our book review section. You have all demonstrated that the future of American studies is in good hands. Bernard Mergen
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