Martha Norkunas is Professor of Oral and Public History in the Public History Program at Middle Tennessee State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University’s Folklore Institute. She is the author of The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History and Ethnicity in Monterey, California and Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts as well as various articles in national and international journals. Her current book project is an examination of nuanced listening in interpersonal dialogue. Norkunas’s work examines how cultural memory is represented in narrative and on the landscape, and how those representations intersect with race, gender, class and power. From 1999-2009 Norkunas directed the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past at the University of Texas at Austin where she taught interdisciplinary teams of graduate students to think critically about memory, history, and culture and to create more diverse and inclusive interpretations at Texas historic sites. After joining the History Department at MTSU in 2009 Norkunas created a concentration in Oral History and directs a variety of oral history projects, including the African American Oral History Project. She teaches graduate seminars in community engaged public history, working with diverse partner organizations around the state. Norkunas has lectured in the United States and internationally and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Houston Endowment, and other state and regional foundations. In 2018 she received the Oral History Association Postsecondary Teaching Award, a national teaching award granted to a distinguished postsecondary educator.  She is a former board member of the National Council on Public History, served on the board of the International Oral History Association from 2016-2021, and is currently Vice President of the IOHA.

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