The History Matters: Yours Too! with Pamela Stewart

Reasons exist for why people do not look to history to address today’s challenges. Yet actively engaging in historical thinking can reveal tools for solving problems faster and with greater success. Even as personal history can matter and the presentation is useful for those interests, this is not an introduction to genealogy class. The interactive, question-based presentation encourages attendees to share experiences that allow for new starting points for learning and reflection—and creating change. The class introduces how harnessing history to solve today’s problems works. It also shows how “doing” a bit of history can help us understand our own value in creating change, open up possibilities for creatively moving forward, and lead towards resolving problems, whether on a small or much larger scale.

This program is cohosted by Friends of the R.H. Johnson Library. This is an in-person program.

Dr. Pamela Stewart—historian, educator, and consultant with learning design expertise—has over 20 years of experience teaching wide-ranging history courses to non-majors at ASU and in public-facing contexts, including 55+ audiences and public art tours and educational presentations at Phoenix Art Museum. Retiring from ASU in 2022, her non-traditional academic career path has played a significant role in advocating the “doing” of history in ways that show the relevance and inclusive nature of thinking historically to address current challenges. She seeks to expand awareness of the fact that if we don’t know the history, we can’t solve the problem.